In a rare police crackdown on Internet file-sharing, two Japanese men were arrested for allegedly disseminating movies and games with software that claimed to protect users' identities.
The arrests -- only the second such case in Japan -- could signal a shift toward harsh penalties for anyone caught trading copyright material online. The entertainment industry had encouraged the crackdown.
Software that allows anonymous file sharing gained attention this year as the U.S. recording industry shifted from trying to shut down the creators and promoters of file-sharing software to suits against the users.
Winny is partly based on Freenet, a freely distributed program intended to bypass Internet censorship by making users anonymous.
Freenet's creator, Ian Clarke, said the two Japanese men were apparently caught because they used a messaging function in Winny that was not anonymous.
"In general, nobody should trust any [file-sharing] system which claims to protect anonymity unless its design has been independently reviewed," Clarke said.
The Japanese police investigation coincided with a criminal complaint filed by video game maker Nintendo Co., game developer Hudson Soft and the Japanese and International Motion Picture Copyright Association, he said.
The 41-year-old man posted two movies -- including the Academy Award-winner "A Beautiful Mind" -- on the Net, while the 19-year-old released Nintendo's "Super Mario Advance" and other video games, Kumamoto said.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/1 ... index.html
