Do I hear JASRAÇ jackboots at the door?

[Taro Toporific]

It has begun...

Mulboyne ‏just tweeted:
"In piracy crackdown news, JASRAÇ has reported a 51 yr old man to police for illegal uploading...http://news.mynavi.jp/news/2012/09/21/030/ (in Japanese)

Goofy Google Translate...
Accused men who upload illegal music files JASRAÇ, in Share
mynavi.jp | 2012/09/21
September 19-- Japanese S0ciety for Rights of Auth0rs, Ç0mposers and Publishers (JASRAÇ) has been published on the Internet without permission to commercially available music files on CD (51 years) using the software "Share" file sharing man living in Sakaide, Kagawa Prefecture though, we announced today that it has submitted a letter of complaint to the police station on suspicion of violating copyright law Sakaide (public transmission rights violations).
Upload illegal music files music management of the association has entered with the, "Share" twice around July, men living in Sakaide has been accused, can be sent to Internet users of an unspecified number are you in such a state, that it has infringed copyright (right of public transmission).
According to the police investigation of Sakaide, at home, as well as stand PC2, that this man know that you were using 12 units, such as an external hard drive with more than 1.5 terabytes.

Protect-everyone-upload-dow.jpg

[matsuki]

It has begun?

[yanpa]

They were at it in April and May, so maybe not such a dramatic development.

[Taro Toporific]

They were at it in April and May, so maybe not such a dramatic development.

"Share" is the replacement for Winny (which stopped development because its creator was imprisoned a few years ago). Why Japanese love old-style P2P file sharing networks like Winny and Share is a mystery.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_(P2P)

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Why Japanese love old-style P2P file sharing networks like Winny and Share is a mystery.

Maybe you can find an answer by doing a search in Japanese on Yahoo?



He, he....I made a tecchie joke!!!!

[matsuki]

Why Japanese love old-style P2P file sharing networks like Winny and Share is a mystery.

Traditional and cultural reasons obviously.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Why Japanese love old-style P2P file sharing networks like Winny and Share is a mystery.

Maybe you can find an answer by doing a search in Japanese on Yahoo?



He, he....I made a tecchie joke!!!!

Very subtle but nice

[Coligny]

Why Japanese love old-style P2P file sharing networks like Winny and Share is a mystery.

Maybe you can find an answer by doing a search in Japanese on Yahoo?



He, he....I made a tecchie joke!!!!

Very subtle but nice

¿ Que ?

[Taro Toporific]

It has begun...

List of current download/upload arrests (Google Translate):
www2.accsjp.or.jp/criminal


The man arrested on suspicion of uploading Cabos "English Speed ​​Learning"
Intellectual Property Information Bureau | 2012/10/16 (goofy Google Translate)
General Administration and the Consumer and Environmental Protection Division of the Ibaraki police arrested a 40 year old man on suspicion of violation of copyright laws upload without the prior permission of the copyright holder. The foreign language materials, Cabos "English Speed ​​Learning" was provided to an unspecified number of Internet users to download without permission through the "Cabos" copyright.
Through information provided by ACCS (Association of Copyright for Computer Software), the copyright holder filed a complaint to the investigators of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police.
Uploading using WinMX file-sharing software* occurred during July and August, an unspecified number users were able to download the Cabos, three men, Shizuoka Prefecture and Tokyo, Hiroshima Prefecture, the prefectural police Fukuoka have been arrested on suspicion of violating copyright law on October 15 ...more on the Japanese website...

*WinMX for Japanese users is the outmoded predecessor of
infamously-insecure, Winny file-sharing software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinMX

[Coligny]

Retroactive application of laws ?

Somebody should stop sniffing glue...

Either I don't understand something well or some cop deserve to be fired...

This is the best way to totally discredit the whole legal system...

Opens the way to just create laws on the fly according to needs... Which is the same as having no laws at all...

And I thought criminalizing victimless offenses was already pushing it comically too far...

[yanpa]

Sounds like the arrest was for *uploading*, which is covered by existing laws.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Opens the way to just create laws on the fly according to needs...

Opens the way?

Japan has already been doing this for as long as I have been here...

[gaijinpunch]

So basically there's been no high profile download-only cases? I have actually heard of people that are taking the "I'm DL'ing until they give me a warning" approach. These are generally FG downloading US TV though, so not quite the same calibur as uploading Nintendo games (which are currently on the sale-only market). Something I totally do not support in just about every way.

[GomiGirl]

We have stopped DL'ing - my Owellian sensibilities taking over I suspect but the threats don't seem as empty in this case from previous "crackdowns".

Much to the annoyance of hubbilicious. But I said to him that if he can bone up on VPN's and anonymousing (sic) then he can resume.

[Taro Toporific]

Thoughts from a Japanese Media Pirate
Boing Boing | 2012/10/16
..I'm not clear on international copyright law, but I know that some kind of law is being broken when we download these videos. For now, with us fans and our fandoms, it's a very gray area...
<big snip>
...I know a lot of people who would be happy to have an all-inclusive Japanese media archive and wouldn't mind paying a small fee for access to everything. Wouldn't it be great to see Japanese dramas and films licensed in much the same way as anime site Crunchyroll? It started out hosting media without permission from any rightsholders, but went on to build good relationships with them. They used to be a streaming site for Asian dramas, films, and anime, but after going legit, the focus is now on anime. They have some dramas, but few popular or well-known dramas that are in high demand.
I plan to support this stance and hope that, in the near future, we can make it a reality.

<end>

[gaijinpunch]

There's a few options for you, GG. Let me know if you still want some help sorting them out. FG Lurker who has way more experience at this than me can chime in here, but I'm going to field a guess that if you just want Hulu, TV.com, and Netflix, then unblock-us.com is probably the best bet. It's as cheap as strongvpn, and there should be no bandwidth issue of having the VPN mask you. That being said, if there's some miscellaneous site you want to use that unblock-us doesn't support, you're SOL.

Now, with all that out there, if you really wanted to DL something, aren't there free Wifi spots where you could go, download anonymously, and leave. If you were really paranoid, get a seedbox, and intermittently go to random Starbucks throughout the city to tank up your laptop on that weeks booty?

know a lot of people who would be happy to have an all-inclusive Japanese media archive and wouldn't mind paying a small fee for access to everything.

I wouldn't mind doing this in the US (and do) but the problem is it's not all available in a centralized location, and some of it has shit infrasturcture. CBS/tv.com has two shows I like, and their streaming capabilities aren't up to the quality of Hulu+ or HBO (neither of which are perfect on my setup either). Then you've got basic cable stations (AMC) which have the best shows, and are only available for iTunes, for basically the cost of the BluRays which are released some 9 months later (no thanks). Then, the cable stations have the dumbest of set ups, where it's based on your cable provider. I guess I see why though. My parents got HBO & Showtime solely for me to stream... but Showtime doesn't stream through their provider, yet. I'll give America kudos for being ahead of Japan on the internet curve (as you'd expect) but honestly I'd have expected there to be something more streamlined in place by now.

[Bucky]

Meanwhile in the US, a Korean fellow has been felled by the long arm of the law.

Federal authorities say an Everett man has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for illegally copying and distributing Korean television shows.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Seattle announced the sentence on Friday of 37-year-old San Jin Kim, who pleaded guilty in July.

Prosecutors say Kim ran websites that distributed pirated movies, television shows, software and workout videos that he marketed to the local Korean community and charged a fee to download.

He was also ordered to pay nearly $410,000 to the government.

Federal officials say there were tipped by somebody in Seoul, Korea, who said Kim's Lynnwood-based company was illegally distributing copyrighted material.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/10/13/2330778/prison-for-wa-man-who-pirated.html

[Taro Toporific]

Imagine the jailhouse conversation:
Q: What are you in for?
A: Illegal love pillow covers.

Two pirates arrested for unlicensed love pillow cover featuring AKB members
www2.accsjp.or.jp/criminal/2012/1201.php
(goofy Google Translate)
On October 30, 2012, the Internet auction police and the Cybercrime Division Consumer and Environmental Protection Division police of Tochigi found unlicensed photos of the "Talents" published by Shueisha Co., Ltd. had been pirated. The Copyright Owners made a formal complaint and the police arrested two men on suspicion of distribution of pirated goods...
...The men were illegally selling on an Internet auction. The Pillow Cover photos were of "Tomomi Itano" and "Yuko Oshima" of the idol group "AKB48" which was published in the issue Shueisha, Inc. in 2011 "Announced surprise swimsuit! Election AKB48" has been duplicated without permission. The two illegal sales occured on April 25 and August 13, and each sale was for 6,660 yen
...Raids of the men's houses were conducted on the same day the arrest and about 250 pirated pillow covers and a mouse pads were seized.
news.mynavi.jp/news/2012/11/01

AKB-love-pillows.jpg

The publication in question used for the Love Pillows

[Coligny]

Two pirates arrested for unlicensed love pillow cover featuring AKB members

On October 30, 2012, the Internet auction police and the Cybercrime Division Consumer and Environmental Protection Division police of Tochigi found unlicensed photos of the "Talents" published by Shueisha Co., Ltd. had been pirated. The Copyright Owners made a formal complaint and the police arrested two men on suspicion of distribution of pirated goods...
...The men were illegally selling on an Internet auction. The Pillow Cover photos were of "Tomomi Itano" and "Yuko Oshima" of the idol group "AKB48" which was published in the issue Shueisha, Inc. in 2011 "Announced surprise swimsuit! Election AKB48" has been duplicated without permission. The two illegal sales occured on April 25 and August 13, and each sale was for 6,660 yen
...Raids of the men's houses were conducted on the same day the arrest and about 250 pirated pillow covers and a mouse pads were seized.

I'll take one thanks...

(BTW, wonder if it would be the same had they used their own picture of said spunkdumpsters...)

(please, don't tell Yua kthxbye)

[matsuki]

Two pirates arrested for unlicensed love pillow cover featuring AKB members

On October 30, 2012, the Internet auction police and the Cybercrime Division Consumer and Environmental Protection Division police of Tochigi found unlicensed photos of the "Talents" published by Shueisha Co., Ltd. had been pirated. The Copyright Owners made a formal complaint and the police arrested two men on suspicion of distribution of pirated goods...
...The men were illegally selling on an Internet auction. The Pillow Cover photos were of "Tomomi Itano" and "Yuko Oshima" of the idol group "AKB48" which was published in the issue Shueisha, Inc. in 2011 "Announced surprise swimsuit! Election AKB48" has been duplicated without permission. The two illegal sales occured on April 25 and August 13, and each sale was for 6,660 yen
...Raids of the men's houses were conducted on the same day the arrest and about 250 pirated pillow covers and a mouse pads were seized.

I'll take one thanks...

(BTW, wonder if it would be the same had they used their own picture of said spunkdumpsters...)

(please, don't tell Yua kthxbye)

Those pillows are super creepy...the loneliness of this cuntry is pretty sad sometimes.

[Taro Toporific]

Month After Japan’s Strict New Download Law Comes into Effect, Survey Suggests that Consumers are Spending Less Than Ever on Music
RocketNews24 | Nov 5, 2012 by Philip Kendall
As of 1 October this year, knowingly downloading copyrighted music and video in Japan became punishable by up to two years in prison and a 2 million yen (US$25,000) penalty.
The law was passed in June after the Japanese music industry, the second largest in the world after the US, reported continued financial losses, with analysts suggesting that just one in 10 downloads were legal.
Since the law came into effect, there have certainly been some changes, and many internet users have become reluctant to click that download button for fear of receiving a hefty fine, meaning that the law has been a success in a way.
According to a recent statistical survey, however, since the law was passed, sales of music in Japan have continued to fall and consumers are actually showing less interest in music than ever before. Livedoor News reported yesterday that the results of a consumer survey show that more than 68% of respondents spend “0 yen” on music in an average month; the highest the figure has been in almost ten years...more...

[Coligny]

.

Missing in their list :

Cat dutch oven battle farts...

[Yokohammer]

Month After Japan’s Strict New Download Law Comes into Effect, Survey Suggests that Consumers are Spending Less Than Ever on Music

Because this is an issue that's somewhat close to home for me, I'll mirror the response I made over at the Café to a similar post:

But this is what always happens. It happened when the record companies started suing people in the US too. Music is supposed to be fun. A way to relax, etc. So when you start regulating something and imposing hefty penalties the way the music industry has attempted to it's only natural that people turn away. There's music to be had elsewhere. And of course the people who really get hurt are the artists. Not because some people download illegally, but because the entire "major music industry" has its head up its ass, and they don't really understand what it is they're trying to sell to whom. Japan's music industry has had plenty of time to see what happened in other markets. But they don't see, they just make shit up in the boardroom to suit themselves and their bottom line. They shot themselves in the foot when they had a clear view of the loaded gun pointed at said foot. Typical, and they deserve what they get.

All these attempts to legislate and regulate the music market are basically just desperation on the part of an industry that is too big to support its own weight, too arrogant to understand the needs of its customers, and too ossified to adapt to the times.

As you may have intuited, this is a pet peeve of mine.

[GomiGirl]

What is the solution for protecting copyrighted material though? It is different from different perspectives.

Do we just throw up our hands and say that piracy can't be stopped so we stop creating music and software and films? The market will be poorer for it.

But then as soon as people try to protect their work, it is another nightmare.

I would like to hear some possible workable solutions. We have had a nightmare week when our copy protection system malfunctioned and a group of people who were legitimate customers were treated like pirates. It has been horrible for our customers and for us. But when there are 10:1 pirated copies of your work out there it makes it hard to keep motivated to keep working to create interesting software when people are just going to just steal it anyway.

[Yokohammer]

GomiGirl, you're talking about software, right?

One of the fundamental mistakes the music industry makes is attempting to treat music the same way as software applications designed for practical applications. Music is not a word processor, or a dictionary (in your case?), for example. People (the "customer") relate to music in a totally different way than they do to a word processor or spreadsheet, or even a game. The latter are "appliances" of a sort. Music is music. Music is in our DNA. The relationship between a musician and his or her audience is totally different from the relationship between a software designer and the people who use his or her product. The software analogy for music is a convenient way for the music industry to legitimize their claims, but it doesn't work that way.

The music industry's proper role is to be an enabler for music. To get music from the artists to the people, and people to the music. That's how it started out, and it did quite well for a while. But through greed and insupportable growth in the wrong directions the music industry has come to assume itself to be a "granter of rights" to music, and assumes that it is entitled to an inordinate portion of the proceeds. This hurts the artist, the audience, and the music, and eventually comes back to bite the industry in the ass.

People will pay for music they enjoy because of the special relationship they have with the artists, as I implied above. There are plenty of successful independent artists and artists working through small independent labels who are proving that point every day. Some people won't pay because they're thoughtless greedy bastards, but those people won't pay under any circumstances. A subset of people who are disinclined to pay can be turned around through education, and it is education that the music industry should be focusing its efforts on. Effective education requires a clue about what the music listener really needs and wants, and how they relate to the music, and that's where the music industry is failing miserably, IMHO.

You cannot regulate music in the way other "products" can be regulated (and I want to bitchslap every music industry punter I hear referring to the music they handle as "product"). The industry needs to figure that out, fast.

[cstaylor]

Louis CK has the right idea. Not music, but content of another kind.

Direct sales lowers costs, gives fans a more intimate relationship with their artists, and cuts out the greedy middlemen (legal and otherwise).

As for software, you need just enough copy protection to make it difficult for the average business user (if that's your market) to steal, but liberal enough that you aren't node-locking a single license with one activation. Unless you're writing games, consider any sales from the home market as a bonus, because no one wants to pay for what they could, with a little sleuthing, have cracked for free.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Wow! Is this thread really the Internet?
Thanks everyone for a thread I've tried several times to comment on now, but can't add anything sensible so will just STFU.

[Coligny]

Just to add... nothing... to the debate...

31615.jpg

[GomiGirl]

Just to add... nothing... to the debate...

Downloading music without paying is like having sex with a prostitute for free.

This is from the wrong perspective... Downloading music without paying is like you being a prostitute and having to give it away for free.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

People commenting on having sex with prostitutes as though it's a form of pleasure have obviously not got a great deal of experience at using prostitutes...they're fucking awful (after a while)....literally, as the case is.

You might enjoy it once or twice. I love throwing money away, but I just got sick of using whores because they were clearly doing it only for the money and that became meaningless for me (took a few dozen visits, but, trust me, it happens to many...)

In music piracy, getting a whore for free is clearly the same principle as downloading a song without paying. From the consumer's point of view, it's great (until you realize how shite whore sex is, but you can probably say the same for most music, too).

Paying for the music is the same as paying the pimp or brothel. Same principle.

Considering the way the industry has screwed consumers, I'm glad to see it get its own back a bit and hurting through piracy. Unfortunately, the people who pay the most for this are those least able to affect the situation and bosses still take home their seven-plus-figure salaries. Bosses will ultimately win (because they always do) and the system will again screw the average punter.

And it'll be a screwing like fucking a whore, so I'm going around and around in circles and think I'd better stop this post before I go any further....