Man Arrested For Providing Links To Uploaded Music Files In Overseas Storage Site
A 46 years old man in Japan was arrested for violation of Copyright Act (Infringement of Public Transmission Rights), that is, putting copyrightable material on the World Wide Web or an FTP server etc, by providing links to uploaded music files in overseas storage site.
He was arrested in connection of personally creating a large number of internet hyperlinks to copyrighted music files that were uploaded in MediaFire, a file storage site located outside of Japan. The links were posted in a web site called “Music Posting Elite Meeting Place”. The website was created using links collection (similar to bookmarks collection) service called “ALink”.
This is the first time that a person was arrested for violation of Copyright Act by providing and distributing links of illegal music files that were uploaded to an overseas storage site. This act of uploading music files to storage site outside of Japan in order to avoid Japanese legal system was viewed as a premeditated criminal act to infringe on copyright.
The copyrights of the music files concerned were managed by JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, Japanese:日本音楽著作権協会 ), which until 2001 was the sole musical copyright administration society. However, since October 2001, competitors were allowed to get into the copyright administration business in Japan.
According to JASRAC, this is a case of illegal distribution of music, acts like this hamper the development of music culture. They will continue stamp out illegal distribution on the net actively together with the police.
ALink is a service where the site creator and other viewers were able to freely enter links of other websites in format similar to a forum or BBS. The entered links are listed together so that they are easily accessible.
The ALink service is provided by UIC. The website UIC provides “Rental CGI Service”, which is mainly message boards or guestbooks in various forms. However, the site itself does not seem to be actively maintained. Their own copyright statement at the bottom of the screen was dated 2000-2003. The page to register a new account was dated 2007.
The ALink site “Music Posting Elite Meeting Place (Japanese: 曲貼り精鋭達のたまり場 )” in concern seems to have been closed.
The arrest was announced by the Hokkaido Prefectural Police and Sapporo Central Police Station on the 1st march 2010.
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