Translated from: http://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/news/2006/09/05/13199.html I can't guarantee that everything is translated accurately, interpret at your own risk/leisure. -- "The problem was being too cooperative with the police", commented Mr. Kaneko regarding the Winny judgment. Judgment briefing hosted by League for Software Engineers On September 4th, nonprofit organization "League for Software Engineers" have received the conclusion of the trial regarding Isamu Kaneko being charged assisting violation of copyrights, and hosted a briefing meeting at Kyoto, where the trial took place. Mr. Kaneko appeared at the briefing with his defense counsel immediately after the trial ended, and expressed his opinions on this incident. * "Seems like they wanted to catch [Kaneko] as the principle offender since the very beginning", details the incident. Chief defense lawyer Akita Masashi describes the details of this incident, starting when two persons were arrested on November 27, 2003, and Mr. Kaneko's home was visited by Kyoto police investigators, up to when Mr. Kaneko was arrested himself. He appealed that "development of Winny for the purpose of spreading copyright infringement" was created by the prosecution. Attorney Akita explains, at the point when they first searched his home, "that was the starting point of when Kyoto police wanting to catch Mr. Kaneko as the principle offender." During the search on November 27, the investigators conducted upload experiments on Mr. Kaneko's PC using Winny. They were on the way to arresting Mr. Kaneko with that experiment, but Mr. Kaneko was using his own specialized download-only Winny, so the experiment ended unsuccessfully. According to attorney Akita, "the Kyoto police were very disappointed at that point, but Mr. Kaneko said he was willing to have a written oath to stop further development of Winny. At that point, the investigators produced a sample statement with the words 'Winny was made for the purpose of spreading copyright infringement', and Mr. Kaneko copied that." After that, a questioning session took place in December 2003, and Mr. Kaneko was arrested in May 2004. During the investigation, Mr. Kaneko signed and stamped all requests from the police and investigators, but noticed things looking strange after he met with attorneys. Since then, he stopped signing of all requests, and remained silent to all questions related to the investigation. With that experience, the trial was "a battle on what exactly Winny is, but the main conflict was on whether Winny was developed for the purpose of violating copyrights. The prosecution side maintained that Winny was developed for the purpose of spreading copyright infringements, but it was surely not created with that in mind." The attorneys appealed that the purpose of copyright violation was only a creation by the prosecution. * Mr. Kaneko showed his stance of "continuing the battle to wherever it takes". Mr. Kaneko commented his thoughts on this incident: "the problem was having cooperated with the police too much in the beginning." He explains "I thought the police was right, so if they had such strong opinions, I thought it's right to answer it. After meeting the with attorneys, I realized that this would become a problem of helping all programmers, and thought it was a mistake to easily obeyed the police." He said that the police and investigators can not be trusted, and anything spoken will only be taken with a bad slant, so he ended up keeping silent. Regarding the trial, "I am glad to be able to meet such excellent defense counsel. Contents of the final debate were very precise." Regarding the technical arguments, it went the way the defense had wanted it. According to arguments from the defense side, Winny's increased anonymity due to encryption and cache abilities were used to make determining the source sender difficult, thereby giving users a sense of security. The prosecution maintained that those features are used to further copyright violations by increasing the efficiency of file transfers. The defense answered that according to Keio University's Environmental Information department professor Murai Jun's testimony on February 16, 2006, Winny's features were all made for increasing the persistence of files, and not for assisting copyright infringement. The reason why it was made difficult to determine the users was to prevent their IP addresses from being known, thereby defend against attackers. Also, following the movements overseas, it's argued that it is unprecedented for software developers and distributors to be held responsible. Even for American company Grokster, which provided P2P services and was held responsible after supreme court decision, there are strict requirements to show what constitutes assisting in copyright infringement to decide who is liable. Just because there are people who abuse new technology doesn't mean that they are within the extent punishable by law. Furthermore, it is a mistake to punish the developers on the concept of assisting crime, the defense argues. Regarding Mr. Kaneko's intent for developing Winny, "people will probably get mad if I said it was for killing time, but basically it has changed for all the software I made up to now. It's about right to say I made it because I happened to thought of it. Making programs and showing it to others is my way of expression." Winny was also developed on an idea. Initially, the plan was to stop development after one month of proof-of-concept testing, but it seemed like an interesting theme so he continued, Mr. Kaneko said. After that, Mr. Kaneko thought about the problem of whether the Winny technology can be used for content distribution: "when official Winny1 was released publicly, I thought that was the end of the file sharing part, and for Winny2 I was going to focus on the BBS part, but there were still things I wanted to do for Winny1." Regarding that thought, with help from the people he met because of this trial, he was able to achieve it in business form with the "SkeedCast" company. "I won't say it's a good thing I got arrested, but I thought it was good in the end that what I wanted to do for Winny1 can be realized," he commented. Also, Mr. Kaneko gave words of thanks to his supporters, "I am very thankful to be able to receive support from so many people. It would be helpful if everything ends in Kyoto this time, but I will continue the battle wherever it takes." He showed that he is willing to continue the battle even if it goes to upper courts. The defense arguments were given during the September 4 trial, for which the defense side maintained that Mr. Kaneko is not guilty. The prosecution is asking for one year sentence on charges of assisting copyright infringements. The decision is scheduled to be announced on December 13.