Law Penalizing Downloaders, Criminalizing Ripping Passes in Japan

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by j0x

i am no internet networking expert but i think ISPs can still track what you download even if its anonymous or encrypted as long as they got suspicious on the size of your downloading by monitoring your bandwidth usage, they can make an educated guess

wow the japanese government is serious about this

I think you should have stopped at "i am no internet networking expert".

1) Not all ISPs are interested in or have the capability/equipment. So far the only ones who have even expressed interest are the ones owned by the media content middlemen (Time-Warner, etc ... I've stopped calling them creators because they aren't - they screw the creators as well).
2) They *can* log file-to-file transmissions but most ISPs dump their logs after a few days at most simply because of the volume. Often a human never even looks at them. DDLs (computer-to-computer whole file transmissions) constitute literally billions of transactions a day in a large ISP.
3) Encrypted packets are opaque. An ISP would have to collect enough of them, run them through a decoding process and then figure out what they had. Most ISPs are not the National Security Agency multiplied by a million to handle all the possible file transactions nor do they have that sort of equipment.
4) ISPs are in business to give you access to the Internet. There's no incentive for them to "go after you". IF law enforcement chose YOU specifically (due to a warrant), they could collect all your ingoing and outgoing traffic but that would amount to an expensive sting operation. In most countries, law enforcement can't simply go on "fishing expeditions". And with the advent of "casual Joe Public streams his tv stuff via Hulu, Netflix, Crunchyroll", everyone has a lot of data transfer.
5) Torrenting is different - its EASY to nab someone because everyone is broadcasting their address in a specific cloud for a specific copyright violation. Animax or Disney hire private 3rd party companies who download a bit torrent client, collect some cloud member IPs, and then issue DMCAs to the ISP to hand to you. For that they charge the Animax's lots of money. The DMCA takedown keeps it out of the court system - where the courts have mostly ruled that an IP address does NOT equal a specific person.
6) As several of our Japanese-who-live-in-Japan posters and our posters who analyze Japanese politics have pointed (repeatedly), a law being passed doesn't mean the Japanese government is "serious about it". There's this concept called "feel good law" -- makes the lobbyist happy without actually accomplishing much.

[j0x]

@Vexx

i am mostly basing my previous answer because of what i read here

Several music rights groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan say they have developed a system capable of automatically detecting unauthorized music uploads before they even hit the Internet. In order to do that though, Internet service providers are being asked to integrate the system into their networks.


The system works by spying on the connections of users and comparing data being uploaded to the Internet with digital fingerprints held in an external database. As can be seen from the diagram, the fingerprinting technology employed is from GraceNote, with intermediate systems provided by Copyright Data Clearinghouse (CDC).

Once a match is found, rightholders want ISPs to automatically block the allegedly infringing content. But according to one report, there may even be requests to send out warning letters to uploaders. If implemented this would amount to the most invasive “3 strikes” style regime anywhere in the world.

source: from Random32's shared link - http://torrentfreak.com/jail-for-fil...regime-120624/

and Anonymous strikes back on Japanese websites DDoS as usual - http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2012/0...gal-downloads/

the highlight of that link says

The download portion of the law comes into effect in October, whilst the ripping ban is due in January.

so DVD-Ripping/BluRay-Ripping (and maybe as well as TV-Ripping) is still fine to do until January 2013

[aohige]

They can claim whatever they want, but decrypting the content of a winny/share type p2p data packet is far from easy compared to say, a torrent (which is basically fully transparent). Especially if the file is layered in encryption to begin with, on top of the p2p packet encryption.

Yeah, it's possible. No, it's not realistic to analyze every packet.
It'll probably be used to make "examples" of random arrests though.

[Random32]

I thought the unity cache things helped provide plausible deniability. You will end up randomly downloading and uploading a lot of stuff that isn't what you were actually downloading.

As for the ability to catch people using Japanese P2P. All I have seen are initial uploaders, not uploading when its already in the system, and I don't see how downloading is any easier to catch. Also, these are against individual people, not the mass torrent lawsuits in the US. This suggests that they have a very hard time catching people. Also, none of the cases relate to late night anime, which suggests the late night anime industry doesn't really care (a study specific to anime has shown that piracy boosts anime sales), and the law requires the companies to specifically request antipiracy services before they are provided.

[Vexx]

I don't know why we're seeing this spurt of "omg!!!" threads on the subject. More reading, less thread panic is in order.

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Random32

I don't see how downloading is any easier to catch.

It's not.

It's actually really hard for those encrypted p2p software.
That's why they've been going after the relatively easier targets, you know, the morons who BRAG about their uploads on IP-saving forums.
Yeah, those guys.

[AnimeFan188]

Anonymous Declares War on Japan Over Illegal Downloads:

"Hacker collective Anonymous has declared open season on the Japanese
government for its passage of a draconian ban on illegal downloads and ripping,
briefly taking down several government websites in a series of cyber-attacks."

See:

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2012/0...gal-downloads/

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by aohige

They can claim whatever they want, but decrypting the content of a winny/share type p2p data packet is far from easy compared to say, a torrent (which is basically fully transparent). Especially if the file is layered in encryption to begin with, on top of the p2p packet encryption.

Hasn't there been reports on Jap blogs that Share has been compromised and is no longer 100% safe?

Well the biggest protection is still international borders

[j0x]

Originally Posted by Vexx

I don't know why we're seeing this spurt of "omg!!!" threads on the subject. More reading, less thread panic is in order.

well im not trying to make panic here, in fact i got no right since im only pirating anime on the internet since im poor but im just asking if the japanese government can strictly implement this laws and i was convinced earlier they cannot but new/recent news shows that they got this modern spying/monitoring software that can stop uploading content on the ISP level

and yes they cannot monitor or stop all uploading but the unlucky few that will be caught will serve as a scare for other uploaders

Originally Posted by aohige

It's actually really hard for those encrypted p2p software.
That's why they've been going after the relatively easier targets, you know, the morons who BRAG about their uploads on IP-saving forums.
Yeah, those guys.

ye exactly they will just target few people that will serve as an example and be publicized later to show and make other uploaders to be afraid and stop uploading already

[Dr. Casey]

In recent years Anonymous has started to become my hero, honestly. I know that most of these sky-is-falling scary new laws of the month aren't as bad as they're initially painted (Kudos to Vexx for always informing us that things honestly aren't that bad, I do always get a bit nervous when it comes to threads like these), but I still appreciate Anonymous fighting the good fight. So long as they're on the job, the government can't just casually attempt to tighten internet policies without worrying about repercussions.

[Vexx]

My aggravation is that all these ridiculously cancerous "anti-piracy" laws do is:
1) erode the proper meaning of copyright, patent, and trademark laws.
2) magnify disrespect for law in general.
3) corrupt politicians who get handouts from the cartels.

They're lobbied for by technological illiterate luddites, written by the incompetent, and passed by the clueless. Then courts have to clean up the mess (e.g. "no, sorry an Internet Address does NOT equal a person", etc.)

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

Hasn't there been reports on Jap blogs that Share has been compromised and is no longer 100% safe?

Well the biggest protection is still international borders

Both winny and share have been compromised number of times.
But afaik, all the arrests have been through easily trackable IP traces of forums, instead of actual "lol p2p got haxxxed".

Our police aren't very competent. And that's actually an understatement.

[SeijiSensei]

Don't Japanese P2P implementations also require a common tracker where file sharers register their IPs like BitTorrent uses? Or do peers using something like DHT or some other distributed system to announce their existence? Exchanging a torrrent on BT is the equivalent of announcing that you're a pirate since your IP address is right out there for everyone to see and associated with the copyrighted work you're infringing.

[Random32]

Nope. Perfect Dark works a lot like Freenet. Share/Winny are also similar.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Don't Japanese P2P implementations also require a common tracker where file sharers register their IPs like BitTorrent uses? Or do peers using something like DHT or some other distributed system to announce their existence?

Yeah, as said above, it's more like DHT, but also your computer is always participating in the network by downloading and uploading random files (whose contents are encrypted) that you didn't request. So the theory is that you can't determine any given peer's intent; what they really want to upload/download is mixed in with the rest of the random stuff and it's all encrypted. Of course, one weakness is that someone still has to be the original seed, and it obviously doesn't help if someone has access to the machine itself (so they can see what you intentionally downloaded/uploaded).

With the wide-ranging anti-piracy laws they have now, I suppose it's conceivable that someone could argue just being on one of these networks could be probable cause for a search since "you're probably doing something illegal". But by the same token, I understand that most of the laws are actually acted upon based on complaints by the rightsholder whose work is infringed (which is really hard to determine based on the above system), so that's why they probably rely more on the infinite human potential to blow their own cover.

[asaqe]

Well, worse case scenario they can follow the same thing Japan did in terms of foreigners and eroge sites and simply prevent any Japanese from accessing Torrent Sites period. It happened with TeaTime.

[aohige]

OH LORDY.

Anonymous mistakenly attacked a local office in Kasumi-gaura, an office out in nowhereland, near a lake in Ibaragi, instead of the their target... government building in Kasumi-gaseki, Tokyo.
They took down their site and cracked the server.

NICE JOB, now the lake goers and locals have to deal with traffic problems due to server maintenence.

Basically it's like if a hacker group accidently cracked into traffic maintenance office somewhere out in East Texas while trying to crack NASA.

Anonynous response was "oops sorry, Japanese is damn hard"
.............

[Vexx]

Not a stellar moment for Anonymous, thank goodness they don't do fansubs <rofl>.

[aohige]

I have bad news for them, there's another Kasumi-gaseki in Saitama, as well as many other places in Japan with similar names.
Kasumi-gaoka, Kasumi-gashiro, Kasumi-gatani, Kasumi-gataki, Kasumi-gamine, Kasumi-gaputwhateverthehellyouwant.

[Goshin]

Question is how much will it cost to enforce these laws, and how much more money do they plan to make.
they are only going to slow down people from discovering newer animes, and they will lose more profits.