Tokyo Times

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Bear barter

A man was arrested in Osaka on Monday for trying to sell a giant panda on an internet auction site. But before you gasp in horror at 45-year-old Noburo Ichii’s dirty deed, it should be mentioned that the animal was stuffed. Does that make it alright?

Yet whether you believe it’s acceptable or not is in some ways irrelevant, as selling stuffed giant panda’s is apparently a violation of Japan’s species protection law. And along with Ichii-san, 72-year-old Yasunori Ueda was also arrested, for originally selling the panda to the unsuccessful animal auctioneer in the first place.

Stuffed Panda’s though are obviously a decent money spinner, as the 1.1 metre tall animal had a starting price of 8 million yen (40,000 pounds). This high valuation was perhaps also helped by Mr.Ichii trumpeting that it was “sent from China as a testimony to Sino-Japanese friendship.”

Where the panda did actually come from is still being investigated, and Ueda isn’t giving much away. Only saying, “I got it from a friend 20 years ago.”

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I wonder if he was offering free shipping…

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Flight of fancy

Kohei Shibata, a 24-year-old male, was arrested for fraud last week after attempting to pass himself off as a young flight attendant.

It seems Shibata trawled numerous internet personal sites, pretending to be a 23-year-old female flight attendant called Mizuki Shibata (he obviously couldn’t resist keeping his own family name). This wasn’t just an online scam though. Young Shibata even went so far as mimicking a woman’s voice when he spoke to some of the men he had built relationships with through the sites and in e-mails. Plus he also sent pictures cut from magazines that he claimed were the attractive Ms. Shibata.

After managing to form a particularly promising relationship with a 31-year-old Tokyoite, Shibata-san sent a message saying that he (or should that be she?) had been taken sick and desperately needed a loan to pay for the operation.

Sound suspicious? Too right it does. Yet unbelievably the love-struck victim fell for this and made 6 bank transfers, totaling a whopping 8.2 million yen (40,000 pounds).

Presumably he was hoping for a blissful future with someone like this.

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But even still, 8.2 million yen!?

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Peer-to-peersecution

On Monday, the Kyoto District Prosecution Office filed charges against Mr. Isamu Kaneko. And seeing as he’s the man who developed Winny, the nation’s most widely used piece of file sharing software, the case could have a profound effect on how the whole file sharing issue is dealt with in Japan.

Kaneko-san released Winny for public use in April 2002, with the software designed to provide greater anonymity than that of WinMX. Which up until then had been the most popular piece of file sharing software in use.

When he was arrested last month, Kaneko (who is an assistant researcher at Tokyo University) was quite philosophical. As he commented that, “Basically, what I did clashes with the law, so it was almost inevitable that I was going to be arrested.” But now that he has been officially charged, the academic has understandably changed his stance somewhat. Both he and his lawyers are maintaining that he has no connection with users of the software, and in that sense his actions do not constitute supporting illegal file sharing.

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The fact however that one 19-year-old user of Winny has already been prosecuted for downloading games and films doesn’t bode well for Kaneko’s chances. And prosecutors are also claiming that Kaneko produced numerous updates for the program, despite knowing that it could be used illegally.

Yet perhaps Winny and its developer could well have steered clear of the courts but for a few incidents that occurred over the last year. In March, a virus swept through the program, and in doing so managed to pick up investigation records from a Kyoto Prefectural police officer’s computer. Eventually spreading them around the net. This isn’t the only case of such an occurrence, and as well as police records, some Self-Defense Force documents have now been seen by a much larger audience than they were originally intended for.

For such things to happen though, one has to presume that several police officers and at least one person from the Self-Defense Force had Winny installed on a machine they were using either at work, or for work. I wonder why? And what’s more, will they be prosecuted too if found guilty of downloading copyrighted material?

But like I said earlier, this case could have a huge impact on how file sharing is dealt with. And as a response, Japanese net users have already started collecting money to help Mr. Kaneko defend himself. Now that he has been officially charged, any such contributions could prove to be very helpful indeed.

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No. 1 used underwear seller

My life it would seem is complete. And if I retired from blogging tomorrow, I could rest easy in the knowledge that I ranked No. 1 on Google for used schoolgirl underwear for sale. Sometimes it’s so good to be alive!