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Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

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Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#31

Post by smitherfield »

Zelmor wrote: post #27
smitherfield wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculatively, I think the reasons here are threefold: 1. Japan has the world's oldest population, which means there's a pretty high level of unfamiliarity with and suspicion of many modern technologies. Fax machines remain more popular than email, for example. 2. Video games are a much larger and more mainstream part of Japanese culture than they are in America, and consequently they're seen as "serious business" to…

>the world's most honest and law-abiding country Based on the experience of female friends: don't believe everything you hear about Japan. If you are a gaijin being mugged or harrassed by Japanese men, even police will question your word when describing the villain. They will honestly ask if you have "not just seen him wrong, because Japanese people don't do such things. Must have been a foreigner." Also, witnesses r…

Yes, there's also a lot of xenophobia, but that's not relevant to this case.

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#32

Post by level3 »

For those wondering what the offense is, the news reports specifically indicate public distribution of a program to circumvent copyright protection. Japanese copyright law does make circumvention itself illegal, but in general you won't be bothered until you try to make your tools widely available.

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#34

Post by mikekchar »

hkmurakami wrote: post #29
fenomas wrote: post #22

After a bit of poking around it looks like the tool was called "padBinEditor" - files and instructions can be found on various English game cheat sites. As near as I can tell, all it does is let you edit locally stored game data files - to lower a boss's stats and so on. Why this is illegal, I have no idea. JP news reports all mention "bypassing data protection", so I guess that means the data files were encrypted (f…

If you were to share a bunch of copyrighted material in the States, the MPAA/RIAA et. al. would come and threaten you with a law suit (and you'd settle out of court). In Japan, if you do the exact same thing, you will be arrested [1]. It's a difference in "what is normal". [1] http://aramajapan.com/news/music/40-people-arrested-for-ille...

Unless it has changed recently (which is very possible) I believe Japan still only has criminal charges for "commercial" copyright infringement. In other words you need to make money off if it. I'm not familiar with the incident you linked to, so take my comment with a grain of salt.

Edit: I am indeed wrong. The criminal penalties are spelled out here: http://www.cric.or.jp/english/csj/csj5.html

I don't have time to see when it changed, but this is a pretty big modification from the last time I looked. Sigh...

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#35

Post by rbanffy »

Zelmor wrote: post #30
beedogs wrote: post #25

How on earth is this a criminal offense? Copyright law should never, ever be that powerful.

In japan they are. People have gone to jail for double digit years and have been ordered to pay millions of yens in damages for file sharing. From wikipedia straight: >Unlike most other countries, filesharing copyrighted content is not just a civil offense, but a criminal one, with penalties of up to ten years for uploading and penalties of up to two years for downloading. I've done my fair share of trying to get vin…

How long has it been crazy like this?

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#36

Post by Zelmor »

rbanffy wrote: post #35
Zelmor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In japan they are. People have gone to jail for double digit years and have been ordered to pay millions of yens in damages for file sharing. From wikipedia straight: >Unlike most other countries, filesharing copyrighted content is not just a civil offense, but a criminal one, with penalties of up to ten years for uploading and penalties of up to two years for downloading. I've done my fair share of trying to get vin…

How long has it been crazy like this?

About 20 years, as far as I can tell. There is also a high level of Internet service provider cooperation. http://www.zdnet.com/article/japans-isps-agree-to-ban-p2p-pi...

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#37

Post by hkmurakami »

mikekchar wrote: post #34
hkmurakami wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to share a bunch of copyrighted material in the States, the MPAA/RIAA et. al. would come and threaten you with a law suit (and you'd settle out of court). In Japan, if you do the exact same thing, you will be arrested [1]. It's a difference in "what is normal". [1] http://aramajapan.com/news/music/40-people-arrested-for-ille...

Unless it has changed recently (which is very possible) I believe Japan still only has criminal charges for "commercial" copyright infringement. In other words you need to make money off if it. I'm not familiar with the incident you linked to, so take my comment with a grain of salt. Edit: I am indeed wrong. The criminal penalties are spelled out here: http://www.cric.or.jp/english/csj/csj5.html I don't have time to…

I definitely recall 3 people being arrested back in 2012'ish for sharing a very large number of Nintendo 3DS ROMs on one of the Winny/Share/Perfect Dark platforms, so the change must have preceded this.

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#38

Post by Zelmor »

smitherfield wrote: post #31
Zelmor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the world's most honest and law-abiding country Based on the experience of female friends: don't believe everything you hear about Japan. If you are a gaijin being mugged or harrassed by Japanese men, even police will question your word when describing the villain. They will honestly ask if you have "not just seen him wrong, because Japanese people don't do such things. Must have been a foreigner." Also, witnesses r…

Yes, there's also a lot of xenophobia, but that's not relevant to this case.

I get triggered whenever Japan is mentioned as an honest and law abiding country with zen buddhist tradition. Makes people think the fence is made of sausages yonder. The reality of the social situation is far worse than what Westerners perceive.

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#39

Post by wyldfire »

rawnlq wrote: post #2

If someone did this in the US, can they get in trouble? When exactly does "hacking" a game become illegal? What about people doing it for research like the machine learning mario guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44 . Or tool-assisted speedruns? Or the starcraft broodwar ai? Is it only when you breach the TOS or copyrights? Just curious since it never even occurred to me that such things are punishable.

> If someone did this in the US, can they get in trouble?

No, not really.*

> What about people doing it for research

§ 1201 has lots of exceptions including "Nonprofit library, archive and educational institution exception (section 1201(d))."

* Yes, technically the laws here in the US are broad enough that if you did something that the US DOJ or local LE became very concerned about, they could at the very least arrest, detain, and charge you with a crime if not convict you of it.

Re: Japan student held for making Puzzle and Dragons hack

#40

Post by amake »

smitherfield wrote: post #24
Illniyar wrote: post #3

How is this defined as breaking copyright law? Did the cheat contain code from the original game?

Speculatively, I think the reasons here are threefold: 1. Japan has the world's oldest population, which means there's a pretty high level of unfamiliarity with and suspicion of many modern technologies. Fax machines remain more popular than email, for example. 2. Video games are a much larger and more mainstream part of Japanese culture than they are in America, and consequently they're seen as "serious business" to…

> Fax machines remain more popular than email, for example.

This is a huge overstatement. Fax use is still common, but in no way is it more "popular" than email.

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