Japanese High Court Realizes That Developer Of File Sharing Software Shouldn't Be Liable For Infringement

from the good-news dept

Fri, Oct 9th 2009 3:49am — Mike Masnick

Back in 2006, we were disappointed by a Japanese court decision that found the developer of the popular (in Japan) file sharing software Winny, guilty of copyright infringement. The issue, like in so many other cases around the world, was whether or not, by just creating the software, he had "induced" infringement. But by blaming the developer of software for how others use it, the courts put a significant chill on innovation. It suddenly creates massive liability for any developer. The case was appealed, and the good news (via Slashdot) is that Japan's High Court has overturned the lower court's decision, saying:

"Merely being aware of the possibility that the software could be abused does not constitute a crime of aiding violations of the law, and the court cannot accept that the defendant supplied the software solely to be used for copyright violations."

Nice to see common sense win every once in a while.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: copyright, japan, liability, winny

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

B. Franklin, 9 Oct 2009 @ 6:06am

Common sense...
"Common Sense isn't that Common."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Harshal (profile), 9 Oct 2009 @ 7:21am

Wouldn't it have been the same as prosecuting a knife manufacturer for a murder committed by their knife.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
TheStupidOne, 9 Oct 2009 @ 8:27am

Re:
exactly.

now if the knife came with detailed instructions for how to kill someone and pictures of that knife sticking out of someone's throat ... maybe a different story
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PRMan, 9 Oct 2009 @ 9:07am

I bet this has no effect on R4 cards...
Even though there are many legal uses for an R4 card for DS or other chip mods, I'm sure the Japanese high court would see that issue very differently to protect Sony and Nintendo.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sheinen, 9 Oct 2009 @ 9:40am

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me how the Microwave is still allowed? I mean, that bugger RELIES on common sense - don't put metal in it - yet it's freely allowed in even the most dimwitted of households!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
william (profile), 9 Oct 2009 @ 9:47am

uhh, just so everyone knows, this is an extremely rare ruling. In Asian countries (this is a generalization, of course), the courts are rarely truly independent. That's why everyone is SHOCKED the verdict is actually overturned.

On a side note, whatever "the people" try to accomplish by removing the author of winny or the program itself off the Internet really failed miserably. For people who are unfamiliar with the p2p file share scene in Japan, Japanese people don't really use bittorrent, because they have amazingly HUGE pipe. When we were still crawling along the 5mbs, 10mbs lines, most Japanese people already have fiber in their house, so they don't have to "save bandwidth" with bittorrent

anyways, tangent. When winny was claimed to be "hacked" and become un-secure, long and behold someone come up with a new program, called "share". Eventually, "share" was deemed moderately safe so someone come up with a program called "Perfect Dark". Each of the successive application becomes even more encrypted and de-centralized. Since Japanese people's got bandwidth to waste, those applications actually route through other users so you can't really tell who it came from and who it's for. The point is, whatever they are trying to do, it's just driving the file sharing deeper underground. Heavy handed approach don't make people stop, they just go do it in darker places where you don't see them. An even bigger problem is that they create applications that even un-tech-savvy people can use easily, thus increase the number of infringement.

Remember someone said that "If it starts to rain in the desert, it's time to get a new business model"?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 9 Oct 2009 @ 11:15am

Re:
'When we were still crawling along the 5mbs, 10mbs lines...'

The hell are you talking about? A lot of people are /lucky/ to have those speeds in the US! I'm hugely fortunate to be able to get 25Mbps!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Morisato (profile), 2 Nov 2009 @ 8:13am

A bit late now isn't it. I mean its been 8 years or more since this incident occured. He should get reprimanded. I mean people use the iphone and its already been hacked and misused already by some people. Does that mean Steven Jobs should be held liable? Cmon people. They should be actually supporting the developer into making stronger security so that it can STOP people from misusing the software as intended. Though smart devs would at least think of this and possible protection before actually releasing it then finding out if anyone else finds a loop in it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
sprearson81 (profile), 9 Jun 2012 @ 6:56am

Far too late.
[ link to this | view in thread ]