Taken from the Straits Times:

JAPAN ARRESTS VIRUS CREATOR BY USING COPYRIGHT VIOLATION LAW

No law on cyber crime so it pins him for stealing image to hide virus-

A student who created and spread a computer virus has been arrested for copyright violations instead in a case that highlights Japan’s lack of laws on Internet-related crimes.

Masato Nakatsuji, 24, a graduate student at Osaka Electro-Communication University, was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally copying and distributing an image from the Japanese animaton programme Clannad.

But he is also suspected of embedding the “Harada virus” in the image, local media reported.

This is the first time a virus creator has been arrested in Japan, which has no law against malicious computer programmes.

A Kyoto police officer said police had considered other charges, including damage to property and obstructing business, before deciding that copyright violation charges would best hold up in court.

Police said Nakatsuji will not be contesting the charges.

The maximum punishment for copyright infringement is up to 10 years in prison and 10 million yen (S$132,000) in fines.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, the virus was spread via Winny, a popular file-sharing application in Japan.

Computer users who downloaded the image with Nakatsuji’s virus had their data destroyed. Information stored on computers was also leaked on the internet.

The extent of the damage has not yet been disclosed.

Nakatsuji, who admitted creating the virus, was quoted by Asahi as saying he thought “the impact would be great if a popular anime was used“.

He is also suspected of creating and spreading other computer viruses.

Police also arrested Shoji Sakai, 39, a company employee in Osaka, and Katsuhisa Ikema, 35, an unemployed man in Hyoho, for allegedly distributing the image via Winny.

The government-affiliated Information-Technology Promotion Agency received reports of 34.334 cases of virus infections last year, Asahi said.

The figure is a decrease from 2005, when virus infections peaked 54,174.

But officials believe the figure represents only part of the picture.

Japan has been critisised for being slow in passing legislation to crack down on those who make or spread computer viruses.

In 2001, it signed the Convention on Cybercrime in which signatory countries co-operate to tackle Internet-related crimes.

A revised Bill of the Penal Code was submitted in 2004 to the Diet, Japan’s bicameral legislature, to regulate the creation of computer viruses.

Such a regulation is mandatory to conclude the convention.

However, the Bill has not been enacted yet following a dispute over a stipulation regarding conspiracy.

My thoughts:

Note the words I bolded. Well we all know that CLANNAD is popular, but I find it interesting that they used “Japanese TV animation programme” to describe what a visual novel is. This is actually a rather bad choice of words, as it is too vague for the general public to understand what CLANNAD really is. They should have just gotten to the point and said computer game or something. Or at least “text-based computer game”.

If I’m not wrong, the fully voiced version of CLANAND was recently released, thus there will be quite abit of piracy going on over Winny. Not a bad time to launch a major virus attack, but whatever motivated it we’ll probably never know. The Japanese are a really crazy bunch of people anyway.

Well personally, I’m rather glad I’m not that in touch with visual novel news now that Visual News is down and Visual Novels is understaffed. Those were the websites where I got my main visual novel news fix. If I was raging hungry for a good visual novel fix, I think there would be a good chance all the stuff on my com would get deleted.