Japanese P2P Virus Author Gets Off Easily

The news that authorities have been rather lenient with a Japanese malware writer after the latter admitted to be the author of a virus that caused harm to music and movie files on many users' PC made some experts doubt the correctness of courts in such cases.

As Government Technology informs, Masato Nakatsuji, allegedly the first ever virus writer to be taken in by Japanese authorities was detained backin January and admitted being responsible for the malware which showed pics of popular TV anime characters while affecting data on third party machines. The malicious code got spread through the notorious Winny file-sharing system in Japan in 2007.

On May 16, Kyoto District Court found graduate student at Osaka Electro-Communication University, guilty and gave him two years in prison. Nakatsuji, however is not so unfortunate after all as the verdict is suspended for three years and he will thus escape jail time.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos questions the rightfulness of the decision – "Masato Nakatsuji has been found guilty of copyright infringement rather than for the damage his movie and music-munching malware caused" […] "One has to wonder whether if he had been apprehended in another country then he would have been charged with a more conventional cybercrime and might have got a more serious sentence."

Nakatsuji revelead a “noble” intention behind his action – the malware that he developed was a weapon against people who downloaded copyrighted content from peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

"If movies and animated films are illegally downloaded, TV networks will stop showing these programs in the future," Nakatsuji said during the trial, trying to explain his behavior. "My hobby is to watch recorded TV programs, so I was trying to stop that."

Cluley is right to think that the Internet is already as crowded as hell with various types of cybercriminals – without having to worry about one more in the form of a vigilante wanting to take upon himself to put things in order.