Anonymous Protests Japan’s Anti-Download Copyright Law

Yesterday we gave a brief overview of the new revision to Japan’s copyright law, which, when it goes into effect in October, will make intentionally downloading illegal music or videos carry a prison sentence of two years or less, or a fine of up to 2 million yen (almost $25,000). Many people – and I count myself among them – see jail time for such an offense to be excessive, especially given that ‘intent’ can be such a difficult thing to prove.

Not surprisingly, the hacktivist group Anonymous has taken exception to this new revision, and today they launched #opjapan which so far has targeted a number of government websites. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the discussion of the new revision, which thus far has been somewhat muted. Here’s an excerpt from Anonymous’s release on their Japan operation:

We at Anonymous believe strongly that this will result in scores of unnecessary prison sentences to numerous innocent citizens while doing little to solve the underlying problem of legitimate copyright infringement.

If this situation alone wasn’t horrible enough already, the content industry is now pushing ISPs in Japan to implement surveillance technology that will spy on every single internet user in Japan. This would be an unprecedented approach and severely reduce the amount of privacy law-abiding citizens should have in a free society.

To the government of Japan and the Recording Industry Association of Japan, you can now expect us the same way we have come to expect you in violating our basic rights to privacy and to an open internet.

I dropped Anonymous a quick email just now to see how much local participation there was [1]. I’m told that there are currently over 200 Japanese people helping out, united “against the government and the shitty laws they make,” and that many local netizens [2] are asking for JASRAC to come down as well.

I’m not sure if any Anonymous attacks on these targets will have any tangible effect (sites that go down or are defaced, will come back up after all), but news of these attacks might end up making more headlines in Japanese media than the original issue of the law revision, possibly shining a brighter light on the issue.

#2chan join us as you wish #opjapan #anonymous #anonfamily #interwebs

— OpJapan Official (@op_japan) June 26, 2012