Tokyo police investigating a man for allegedly spreading a computer virus had to arrest him on a copyright infringement charge because Japan lacks laws against malicious computer programs.
Masato Nakatsuji, 24, a graduate student at Osaka Electro-Communication University, is suspected of illegally copying and distributing over the Internet an image from the Japanese animation film “Clannad” showing a woman walking amid falling cherry blossoms.
But Nakatsuji also allegedly embedded the image in the “Harada virus,” one of Japan’s “Big Three” viruses, a Kyoto police officer said on the customary condition of anonymity.
Police said it was the first arrest in Japan involving making or spreading viruses.
U.S. leads in telecommunications study: Americans may look with envy on the super-fast Internet connections available in South Korea, Japan and parts of Europe, but they can take consolation from a new study that concludes that the U.S. makes better overall use of its telecommunications.
The U.S. ranks No. 1 in a study led by Professor Leonard Waverman at the London Business School that compared 16 developed countries not just by the quality of their communications infrastructure but also how consumers, business and government use it.
By contrast, the U.S. ranked 15th in percentage of homes that have broadband in the latest survey of the 30 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
On Waverman’s “Connectivity Scorecard,” the U.S. stood out for good use of telecommunications by businesses. Close behind are Sweden and Japan. But the survey found that much more could be done, even in the most developed countries, to take advantage of existing technologies.
Film festival uses file-sharing: Organizers of the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, Calif., have turned to file-sharing in an effort to attract a broader array of participants.
But the software they chose also enables illegal sharing of movies, music, software and other content. And that raises the ironic prospect of an up-and-coming filmmaker getting a legitimate distribution deal after succeeding at Cinequest, only to see his future work traded illegally using the same software that gave him his break.
Cinequest co-founder and executive director Halfdan Hussey says pushing the envelope for new distribution models is a risk he and young filmmakers are willing to take.
Filmmaking is less expensive now, and so are the means to reach the audience.
Bank employee stops remote-control heist: Criminals were seconds away from robbing a bank by remote control when an alert employee literally pulled the plug on their brazen scam, Swedish investigators said last week.
The would-be robbers had placed “advanced technical equipment” under the employee’s desk that allowed them to take control of his computer remotely, prosecutor Thomas Balter Nordenman said in a statement.
The employee discovered the device shortly after he realized his computer had started an operation to transfer “millions” from the bank into another account, Nordenman said.
Poll shows Europeans worried about personal data online: Three out of four Europeans are worried about posting their personal information on the Internet.
Franco Frattini, the European Union’s top law enforcement official, said an upcoming poll will show people were concerned about the security of their personal data and wondering what they could do to protect it.
“It is our intention to fully analyze and understand the feedback we have been given by Europe’s citizens in this survey,” said Frattini, the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner.
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