Japan: Outlawing Illegal Downloads

id:seshiapple picks up ^[1] [ja] comments from a thread ^[2] on Japanese bulletin board 2-Channel in which IT journalist Daisuke Tsuda ^[3] asks 2-channelers: “The outlawing of [illegal] downloads is almost finalized, do you have any questions?” As reported in an IT media article ^[4] [ja] from Oct. 20th, Tsuda was the only member of a committee on the outlawing decision to oppose the idea, although many others, such as economist and blogger Nobuo Ikeda ^[5], have voiced similar concerns in the past ^[6]. An early comment explains that the move would make downloading copyrighted files through services such as BitTorrent illegal.