Japanese police have arrested the author of Winny, a peer-to-peer application popular in Japan, according to a story on ABC News’s Australian site. (Reportedly, a more detailed article is available in Japanese.) Isamu Kaneko, a 33 year old Computer Engineering “guest research associate” at Tokyo University, was arrested for conspiracy to infringe copyright. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison. Winny’s author had previously been known only by the online moniker “47,” but police apparently used the records of some kind of online bulletin board to identify him.
UPDATE (10:20 AM): Corrected Mr. Kaneko’s job title. I originally wrote “graduate student” based on the ABC article, but Seth Finkelstein pointed me to an authoritative page at Tokyo University with the accurate title.
