hydrarchist writes:

"It's been a bad week on the repression front for the p2p community. Last weekend Isamu Kaneko was arrested (10 million yen — more than $100,000 — has already been raised by his supporters to assist in his defense). Shortly afterwards, the RIAA began proceedings against another 493 defendants in the United States. Lastly a private law firm has announced suits against 20 p2p users in Korea, mostly for downloading movies."

Isamu Kaneko, Winny, P2P Repression

Isamu Kaneko, author of Winny, the Japanese P2P software with
encrypted networking capability, similar to Freenet, has been
officially arrested on copyright-related charges. The charge of
violating copyright laws carries up to three years in prison or a fine
of up to 3 million yen ($27,000).Kaneko started the development of Winny in May 2002 and occasionally
appeared on the web forum 2ch with his anonymous codename '47', but
today turned out to be an associate professor at the most prestigious
university in Japan, Tokyo University. Police said Kaneko was arrested
because Winny allowed a 41-year-old man from Takasaki and 19-year-old
from Matsuyama to illegally download pirated games and movies from the
Internet.

The file-swapping software Winny has become a focus of concern for
authorities in Japan this year after investigation records from a
Kyoto Prefecture Police officer's computer and military files from
Japan's Self-Defence Force were made available across the Winny P2P
network. Winny has become a headache for movie and software makers
here, and the industry has been lobbying police to rein in suspected
copyright infringement for months.

The University of Tokyo denied responsibility for the software's
development. In a statement, it said Winny was something Kaneko
created personally, and that other professors did not work on it. The
university set up a team of six professors to carry out an internal
investigation, it said.

some refs for this story via www.newbrainframes.org "