A lawyer for a Japanese professor detained on copyright violations for his file-sharing technology called the arrest "extremely dangerous" yesterday, saying the move threatened the freedom of software creators.
Isamu Kaneko, a 33-year-old assistant professor at the prestigious University of Tokyo, was arrested May 10 on copyright-related charges for developing and offering the popular Winny software, which lets people swap movies and video games over the Internet.
Kaneko was also accused of helping two people illegally distribute games and films online, police said. The other two were arrested in November.
Toshimitsu Dan, an attorney on Kaneko's defense team, said there were no laws in Japan that declare file-sharing software illegal, adding Kaneko only created the software.
"The police are arbitrarily making their own judgment about what is lawful," Dan said in a telephone interview. "And that is extremely dangerous. If this kind of arrest is allowed, there is no future for the development efforts of software creators."
Within days of Kaneko's arrest, a defense fund was set up on the Internet, drawing dozens of like-minded users of "blogs," or Internet journals, who'd never met in person but wanted to support Kaneko.
As of Monday, the fund has raised ¥5 million (US$44,000) for Kaneko's defense, said Shunichi Arai, a software engineer and one of the initiators of the fund.
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