File sharing in Japan

Back in the States there's a little worry that one'll get busted for file sharing, but here in Taiwan it seems to be a non-issue.

I look forward to a shining future in which the obsolescence of copyright law will have been recognized and information and media will be freely available to all. Also, we'll live in space colonies.

i only file share work documents that are like group work. lol

ISP here do cap speed for torrent, but some torrent client (like Deluge) somehow can bypass it

Generally speaking, My ISP which I was with (and will be with again, once they reconnect me after moving home) doesn't restrict download speed but I'm pretty sure it throttles general traffic in the evening as I have noticed slowdown in my surfing late in the evening. Nothing too major tho and everything still works so I don't have any major complaints. Downloads are still (relatively) speedy.

haha!another case of the odex paradox on p2p sharing!!(-~-)

As far as torrenting goes, I haven't really heard of many restrictions. My ISP hasn't had a problem with my dowloading, but my friend has lost internet access for a while because he went past his limit. Forgot which ISP it was. The only thing I've had to do is adjust ports for downloading, gaming, etc. Nothing big.

As far as i know in germany you cant sue someone for downloading copyrighted material but for sharing. And its not allowed for your ISP to look what you did on the internet except the police suspects you of heavy crimes (terrorism, child pornography and the likes). The european government also recently decided that ISPs dont have to expose their users for crimes related to civil law.

But some time past since the last time i checked for those things. They could have changed...

Sweden is in berserk mode to catch people that shares here. Though there has been like 5 cases, so it's not like it's a big chance one will get caught.

Thepiratebay had a bit problem, it's a sad world we live in.

I mainly use Utorrent and Share( it's alot safer I heard).

Friends on IRC nickname me 'Winny' ^^;

We don't have a cap on the bandwidth and pay a flat fee. But due to the ODEX incident I have not been downloading much. In the worst case scenario there's SSH to resort to...

Is that the Karsten Chair from IKEA? I have one too, pretty comfy.

apparently my network admin just sliced off my speed from a shared 512kbps into private 32kbps connection....
well...can't complain since it's free ^^;;;;

but most(I think all) of the isp here aren't restricting torrent/p2p, the problem is that the isps here doesn't have any decent speed for almost anything

Over here one ISP is known for throttling file-sharing and especially Bittorrent-traffic even if the customer has a flat rate.

But then again, this is a good reason for an extraordinary cancellation of the contract, because the general terms and conditions don't say you have to be cost-effective when using the ISPs services.

What worries me a little bit is a law that forces our ISPs to store connection data (mobile phone, e-mail, internet) for six months. So far only the police and intelligence services can access this data and the former only after an investigating judge allowed them to do so.

So far this hardly has anything to do with copyrights but I think this might change soon. The European Commission wants to allow copyright holders to access this data in an attempt to fight the sharing of copyright protected stuff over the internet.
If these plans are carried out we will have the absurd situation that it's easier for the film and music industry to access the ISPs data than it is for the police.
If you ask me it's pretty obvious that a few black suitcases changed hands a while back, because for me it's hard to believe that the European Commission really is that dumb.

German file-sharers may be lucky, because it's highly likely that our Federal Constitutional Court will overturn the law forcing the ISPs to store the connection data (for a long time) in first place by the end of this month. It's obvious that this law is unconstitutional.

Well, Belgium was (and still is) quite well known for its expensive broadband and download/upload limits. But it's getting better due to more competition.

Years ago I started with a broadband connection of 50eur with a limit of 10gb (of which was 1gb upload, so basically only 9gb download). Then they changed it to 15gb (woohoo), of which 1.5gb upload. Now it's better, now have a broadband connection of 40eur and 100gb download&upload. But it's only slowly going to unlimited, with some providers giving unlimited upload but still limiting download. There are of course always more expensive connections or business connections...
I wish it was here like in Sweden of Japan...

Glad to see that and I hope they're not lying or padding their words. I'm not a Winny user or a heavy bandwidth user but I do like some US shows that I can't get here, even with satellite TV.

i cant reply here, is this normal?

anyway @fabian: do you have any sources for this? Because the latest things i found are saying the opposite: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/03/europe_music-downloads_identification/

In Hungary, the two main ISP providers has limits (150gb-250gb / month) of downloading, and after that they issue you with a warning, then ban, if you dont hold yourself back. But there are many other isps, mainly little ones who dont care about this, but, only in the capital of Hungary. In the countryside the people are not that lucky, only 1 or 2 isp providers.

One of Canada's largest ISP (Bell Sympatico) recently admitted to throttling speeds after many years of denial. While Canada's laws a little more vague than in the US, Canadian ISPs will indeed comply with warnings from US IP owners when abuse is reported - I should know (I was sent a take-down notice once for torrenting some software)... of course, nothing ever came of it and it was my first warning anyway. My ISP would rather keep my $45 per month than to let me leave to find another ISP. :P

Here in Sweden we have a flat fee and no cap that i know of. And atm we Swedish users don't have much worry about(i may be a little after on this but i think it's still correct) since they aren't allowed to collect out IP addresses and mostly of the heavier p2p users use torrents or other more private alternatives

w00t~! Canada! Just the fact we're right beside big brother USA that has the world's largest entertainment industry- and downloading torrents/p2p/filesharing isn't illegal here! Infact they protect us when there's an issue with MPAA or w/e.
They sometimes block Canadian IPs, but i've been using proxies ever since the beginning of high school =D

I don't have a download cap anymore thx to plus 7,5€ XD on my internet bill.
The internet was made to share information with everyone and that information involves everything, from music, video, images, news but it was made to be shared as personal gain only and according to international laws information no matter its origins its free. So this things of blocking ISPs and crap is just plain wrong.

There is no decline in the music industry, not in the movies either. The bands don't earn much money from the selling of their CDs only the distributors do and the bands win almost nothing their real money comes from concerts. Anyone who likes a good movie goes to the cinema or wait till it comes out on DVD or Blu-Ray because downloading them you'll only probably get a good image but the true image and sound quality are inside the original disc.

File sharing is easy on Portugal, even the isp provider ease it up, there is n limit at the port range (I saw people in other countries complaining that they can't use P2P) and the traffic limit is wide large (I've got 80gig of international download, ilimited national download as well as upload for 35€). The is the legal problem to, recently, one of the great P2P distribution site(torrent, named Btuga, for those that are interested) was closed by the police and the owner was charged of copyright infringement. I don't have trouble because most anime, 95% of it, isn't licensed in Portugal, so there isn't any problem(I have some in portuguese to =P ).

Shhh! Don't tell anyone... Oh yeah! I'm not from Singapore...

I don't have a data usage limitation. But the speed is usually slower in a peak time. Unfortunately, connection to oversea is not really good. I usually get about 10-50% of my real connection speed when connecting to oversea.

Some ISP's here still have download limits, but it seems to be disappearing. I most often use the newsgroups, but the newest shows go from the torrents. I recently switched from Azureus to uTorrent and I'm loving it: the latter doesn't soak up RAM to impossible levels.

BTW I just love the office Danny and how you nicely fit the figures in there. My room is just crappy if it comes to displaying, in the attic with crooked ceilings and no free walls...

@CrazyO: Looks like I confused the European Commission's plan to filter the internet traffic with our government's plan to give copyright holders easier access to the connection data of ISPs.

So it's not the EU Commission but the German government/Bundesrat that...err..cares 'a little bit' too much about what the content industry wants.

As far as sources go:
(German): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/EU-Antipiraterie-Plaene-finden-Beifall-im-Bundesrat--/meldung/105097
http://www.ipjur.com/2007/01/german-government-passes-bill-for.php3

The latter is written by an patent attorney so it's mainly about patent enforcement, but most of this applies to ordinary copyright enforcement as well. I haven't found a better source in English language.

Well, based on my experiences on these three countries.

In order of when I first had broadband experience:

Australia - medium to high speed with silly download quota and Telstra. No torrents blocking/shaping, except if your ISP is Exetel.
Well, then again, there is TPG with their 150 GB plan... but I left Australia before I had the chance to taste that plan, and I was with TPG, too! >_<

Indonesia - the bare minimum speed to be called broadband, however unlimited download is available at a more affordable price. No torrents blocking/shaping.

Malaysia - the best I've had so far. Low to medium speed, unlimited download at about half the price I paid in Australia and Indonesia. My ISP (Izzi) don't shape/block torrents, however TM Nuts and many other ISPs block.

Japan still rule! There will be 1.2 gbps connection there in the near future, right?.. drollllll ^^

Rather then upgrade their network they seem to want to filter the traffic. :-( Same thing is happening in USA with Comcast ISP (cable internet). They are now limiting your data if you download too much and you can receive an angry email from them saying you been downloading illegal copyright materials. They are mostly doing this because of network load. Since they have a very large number of users and main monopoly in most areas. Also, with FiOs internet by Verizon (which is faster then cable) they need to keep their server running fast.

I agree that P2P even with restrictions and ban of users will not go away. Its a large part of the online life. There will always be ISP that does not filter traffic and they will receive users that move away from ISP that does limit/filter traffic. (sorry I wrote too much) hehe

^_^

Thats a relief lol... anyways I can't even file-share that much with a 30kb/s Broadband connection... (Cursed Shawcable charges too much)

kinda makes me envy ppl living in Japan lol

spread the love in the gray side of the law in Canada. Piracy is such a gray issue here, that no one seems to openly arise the question of restrictions; well, the American companies have been trying to sway Canadian legislatures to do something about it, but it won't happen for a while I'm guessing.

Anyways, share the love, but if you love so much, try and get the actual copy is what I always like to say. I usually end up buying the whole cd's of certain artists whose song I've downloaded, and even the same for Manga read off the internet and movies.

The reason unlimited access high speed internet exist is for us to download lotsa stuff fast. Who the hell is gonna get say 10mbps unlimited connections to read emails.

Hmm i quit using any kind of file sharing tools a long time ago... prolly over 6 or 7 years ago.
Though the current stuff ongoing in germany about the laws and such is quiet annoying, though Fabian did cover it himself enough. ;)
I never had any troubles with the ISPs i had in my past over "to-much-traffic" or whatever, seems i have been lucky (and yes i do DL a loooot... just not via filesharing tools - to afraid - i have other means ^^).
As for your IKEA lamps, i see you got the ones i use too. Though i don't know if it's because it's a picture or whatever but i think the top shelf gets to much light compared to the lower ones... maybe try to adjust the light better?
In any case, now that i see how your shelfes are i would have went with indirect lightning from under the shelfes - little fluorescent tubes from computer case modding or such, they have easy to hide small 12V cables too. Their light isn't to bright but makes a nice warm atmosphere around the figures i would think, it works for my BONDE rack though. ^^

The reason unlimited access high speed internet exist is for us to download lotsa stuff fast. Who the hell is gonna get say 10mbps unlimited connections to read emails.

It's good you clarified what the situation was exactly, due to I always thought it was an anti-p2p crackdown. Regardless I still think this is going to do more harm than good. I can't say this for everyone, but P2P has opened me up to more anime, music and games then I could even imagine 10 years ago. I do refuse to download domestic (US) materials, but I only download import materials due to lack of being able to even listen to it in the US without buying it for a high price. All the J-Rock and J-Pop getting more popular in the US is more than likely from P2P. Most big animes that get popular here are first popular from P2P. If there is a game, movie or album I enjoy, I will go out and buy it. If they cut that off, I believe they are cutting off this new-stream of Japanese Culture to people interested in it.

It's seems that the country's with the highest speed connections, like Japan, are the ones having trouble, guess that they haven't learned that speed isn't all, if the centrals (don't know the name given to them) can´t handle the amount of connections and the speed, then, they should upgrade first this and them give a boost to the speed, this is what is happening in Portugal, first the central, then the line and last, give the speed.

The USA has too much to worry about. They dont focus much on the people that steals files from the rich.

Here in Canada, file sharing is a grey matter as someone already says and there is no rules (AFAIK) that really states that you can't use p2p (download and upload).

Based on my experience with multiple ISPs, they really hate it when you do file sharing (uploading files) because I think it puts too much load on their network in comparison to download. Hence why some ISPs are probably throttling your speed when you use p2p softwares especially torrents.

I know for a fact that my ISP rogers cable throttles my internet every friggin time I use torrents and even suspend my internet for couple hours (tech supports probably gonna say " there is no problem with our network " line when you call XD. I did a little experiment with this by opening 15 files at the same time using torrents and left it overnight. When I woke up, I got no internet until I called tech support -.- .

In addition, they block certain ports so your D/L and U/L speed on torrent is uber slow unless you can find an unblock port.

As for myself, I strictly use mIRC and direct download because having torrents really causes some major lags on my online gaming.

Rogers has bandwith limit caps on each of their internet package ,however, if you go over, there is no extra charges as long as it's within reasonable amount XD.

Sorry for the long comment XD

I remember one time, my hard drive crashed and I lost many of the precious stuffs(let's call them health materials). I bought a new hard drive and put Winny on full drive to get all my datas back. I guess I downloaded about 200GB worth of stuffs and then I got a letter from my ISP telling me that if I keep using bandwidth like that, they will ban me from their service.

I guess that can relate to this post somewhat. But I don't use my bandwidth like that anymore but if my hard drive crash again, who knows...

filesharing in switzerland is also on the gray side of the law, well partially. As long as you don't upload you don't have to fear anything.
That's why more and more ppl here are using Usenet.
I started to use Usenet a few months ago and it's awesome, never got that much speed from another "filesharing" software.

Actually i upgraded my connection to 25Mbit down and 250Kbit up.
The only thing my ISP is doing when someone uses too much bandwith (like 200-300GB DL per month) is setting the download speed a little bit back :) for a short time. haha

I don't do file sharing.

Really, all I want to do is say, man that's the kind of office I want to work in. Figures and a big wall hanging.

The load problem is of course the service provider's fault, but I'm not complaining.

The short story is, they were offering an unlimited (or very high) amount of bandwidth that they knew they couldn't deliver but though nobody would use. This is like selling a 100mg box of pocky that is only 70mg, its a major fraud.

But their carelessness allowed the flourishment of heavy traffic protocols like bittorrent and has benefited a lot of customers.

I used to be a heavy DCC/BT downloader/leecher. But since our network here is crappily slow and unsteady thanks to old backbone, I cut my activity accordingly, and baing considerate to other users.
But then again, users in malaysia are kind of noob in BT, and once they just learnt how to BT, they tend to abuse it and download the internet 24/7.
Typical 'JAKUN'.

Here everyone is limited. I get 10GB a month, but I'm waiting for ADSL2+ to be built so I can get 40GB + 110GB off peak (1am-7am).

So it's the same as Japan except Japan is limiting people to maybe 10,000 GB instead of 10GB.

I used Winny a few years ago but I couldn't find much on it. It could be that I wasn't connected long enough to connect to lots of people. I use bittorrent, then IRC.

starting to look like another ODEX incident from my vintage point. i'm not about to write anything incriminating against myself on this public blog so i'll just give my opinion of the practice of file sharing.

this is an often debated issue in regards to copyright laws and personal privacy, but nearly everyone that uses the internet practices some form of file sharing, whether it'd be downloading music, movies, or sharing photos over e-mails. while some of it may be illegal, a large portion of the population do not do it with the intent of hurting the music and movie industries. in fact, it has been shown that people who download and sample music are more likely to purchase the music then people who do not. those that say otherwise just want to make more money. instead of trying to stop file sharing, people should be coming up with ways to embrace the idea and make money from it.

in regards to the news of ISPs cracking down on file sharing, i personally think of it as a hollow threat from a practical standpoint. you have internet users that practice file sharing, but you must remember that these guys are paying customers of ISPs. aggressively cracking down on your customers only hurt you on the long run due to loss of business or reputation. at the end of the day, its best not to anger your paying customers or else you'll just be screwing yourself over. just look at what ODEX did, and now they're hated by the entire anime community in Singapore.

Well, I have 2 point of views:
- from France
- from Ireland

From France, you can have 20m connection uncap + free phone toward 50 countries + free digital TV for 30 euros per month. Optical fiber is coming in specific areas, you can have 100m/100m for around 45 Euros uncap.
Problem: Olivenne chart want to repress illegal dl by graduated repression going ban you from using internet for years & writing your name onto a blacklist.

From Ireland where I m living now, I have a 512ko uncap for + TV via cable internet for 60 euros per month ! I m missing France :x.

love your office danny! :D I love my home office too, it's not as neat as yours tho ^^; (My husband tries - I think he does a great job already, but I have a lot of stuff LOL)

isn't this voluntary?

but whatever it is, this is a drastic move by the Japanese ISP Association but what they are doing is self-destruction.

here, we don't have a cap on the download size but we do have a cap on the speed that you get. the higher the speed, the higher the fee that you'll be paying. the speed here is pretty decent but i want japan's dl speed =3

and yeah, i too share files over the intarwebs =3

It wasn't al that long ago that Comcast was controlling data upload for P2P users. Essentially they where using software to detect P2P traffic and making it difficult for users to seed. After all anyone who uses P2P is a criminal engaging in criminal activities. You know all of us Skype users and such... After some negative press and being unable to justify their actions they backed off some. Check this out if you want to read more.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-comcast-shooting-itself-in-the-foot-with-traffic-shaping-explanations.html?rel

I use P2P to get my Japanese drama and anime. I download what is on television in Japan and nothing more.

Wow the office is looking nice! Looks like a nice environment for you and Hector to get things done. Reminds me a lot of my office/den in Florida. God I miss that space a lot! It's not easy working here in this small bedroom.

I don't see how they can enforce this without banning the source.

its was on the news recently here in the UK (I say here but relocated to Hong Kong, China temporarily since yesterday) on a 'Green Paper' which i have been told is what politicians use as toilet paper. that the RIAA or MPAA are trying to impose some sort of ruling/law on ISP's to force them to bann customers who use their connection for filesharing.

already in the UK we are subjected to a 'fair usage' policy when signing up with 97% of all ISPs which means we are limited in how much bandwidth we can use a month.

also a recent UK survey found out that most ISPs were selling customers short of what they paid for respectively & only 2% of customers only get the full speed that they pay for. which is another issue that should be taken up but for some mundane reason is not.

so why do ISPs sell anything higher then a 128/256/512kb/s connection if they do not want us to download? its like having a stupidly expensive Buggati supercar but only driving it up & down your driveway. there is no logic to it.

im currently sitting here in my apartment in hong kong with a 6mb connection with unrestricted download limits on top of that its stupidly cheap!

I'm using AT&T DSL (6.0 Mbps down / 768 kbps up) here in the states, which they don't cap anything. However, I'm not a P2P user. I get my entertainment by streaming from Veoh.com; so it's not too bandwidth intensive.

Off topic (sorta) are O'Reilly books good for beginners on web developments? I kind of want to get into building content intensive websites in the future.

Personally, I think P2P is one direction the interwebs is heading. Seriously, either companies find ways to tie it into contracts somehow, and use peoples underused CPU and bandwidth... or the botnets will.

With the way the intertubes are at the moment, it's too difficult to stop P2P. And if you can't beat 'em...

Didn't I read recently that Europe just invested heavily in P2P technology?

Henry,
I think one of the ISP called ZPDee had a cap on how much bytes you can download. however they have long since stop doing that, since the other ISP started offering the same service without the cap. ^^
thank God for capitalism and free competition. ^^

O noes... There goes our raws...

Hope there's no significant changes on the raws circulation. I still need my fix.

Hi Danny,

I've ditched Torrents/xMule/SoulSeek and similar programs.

What I have been doing nowadays using using newgroups binaries. I've subscribed with one of the biggest news provider and also took their SSL add on.

Its much faster than torrents, more secured, encrypted. I am a happy person since then.

Recommended.

the net is getting more and more strict >.<
I once heard from a friend that Singapore catch down people using LimeWire because of bandwidth issue. Recently they're catching illegal anime downloaders, though. lol they have too much cash to spend on tracking the customers -__-

I never saw a problem with file sharing at the ISPs I have worked in the past. Of course they were both smaller organizations so the flow of email was more or a problem for me. do I file share? No. I'm antisocial that way.

Agree with Jed D`Lagged: ISPs and Ip owners MUST learn to get their money out of P2P traffic if they want to survive.
ADV Films in US started to distribute their supplement materials (like trailers and artwork) via Bittorrent but it sort of half-alive at the moment...
By the way, Danny, is this something Mirai Inc may be interested in doing :)? I know, I am probably asking too much, but why not?

the internet industry is still flourishing here so speeds are not very fast.currently i am using 64k cable internet with unlimited download sucks i know thinking of swithing to DSL 512k with unlimited download for 12000Rs= 1859 YEN.cost will increase though :( .some isps have download limits on dsl and recently download limits are finishing. 1mb or 2 mb connections for a long time didnt have download limits but too expensive 1 mb connection for 2000RS=3100 yen and 2 mb for 5000 RS=7748 YEN :((

lols... ever heard of the odex incident? = lol... i bet most ppl here from singapore has...

I heard from some people that some Japanese ISPs have been warning users who get caught downloading copyrighted material. Do you think they will in the future?

why must the first word that flows into my mind be - "ODEX"...?

I think here doesn't have a cap on bandwidth and the fee's flat as prata. But thanks to the above mentioned word; I'm suffering from anime withdrawal T^T

I see the crack down is hard everywhere i use to use P2P but once i got my mac i decided to not use it. It takes up to much space.

People downloading 700 tetra bytes of health care images are lagging up the network XD

I don't know much about IPS restrictions, if there are any, in my area; I watch anime online(never mind the quality) so I don't really pay attention to that. But the main distributor of anime in Singapore, ODEX, has issued anime downloaders two choices since last year: Pay a fee for "damage compensation" of either S$3000 or S$5000 depending on the amount of downloads, or face a lawsuit. ODEX obtained permission from Internet provides here to give them a user's IP address, never mind their privacy policy, and since then ODEX has collected quite a sum; from 9-yr old anime kids to older downloaders. However, they claim that those monies are barely keeping with covering for the operation cost of this purge.

Moar info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odex#Controversy

Late comment, but I wanted to say I gave up on torrent s and the like a while ago.

Well, P2P services can be damaging to the business, however, if you look at it from a different perspective, it too can bring some cultural aspects across to the newer generations (e.g anime ^^;) and thus open a potential market for more customers/buyers/investors abroad.

There's pros and cons to everything I suppose. But how much does the pros or the cons weight, heavily depends on the person's personal point of view.

It's actually going to be interesting to see how the Japanese ISPs are going to try and handle the issue, and if they plan on also addressing inbound connections as well.

Would be disappointing if there was some measure of overstepping bounds and starting to lock out incoming ips to winny sharepoints as well. Nonetheless it will only be a matter of time before people come up with 'another winny' to replace this one if they start a detection method for the packets or whatnot. There will always be someone a step ahead.

an advertisement on file sharing in singapore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hocXOBC0UNQ

me here still ok, p2p sometime working sometime not working(i think is ISP problem), now subscribe to other "underground" service :p.

NO CAP ON BANDWIDTH USAGE??????? If they're so concern with overuse by Winny users, why not just introduce a bandwidth surcharge like Bell does? They get to make money at the same time and doesn't scare off the customers too much, right?

from what i know about here in america, there's no cap in bandwidth (at least by most companies) and no cap in anything in general. the problem is that the internet is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow where i live. 15Mbps for verizon fios is like $40-50 a month, and $30-40 a month for 5Mbps. (some areas like NY where there is much more ISP competition, there is a small boost in speed which is an approximately extra 5Mpbs.. still so slow compared to japan/korea)

and word from my cousin was that a friend/photographer from our cousin's wedding almost got fined 30k because comcast ratted him out for file sharing and he acted like a complete FOB to get out of it somehow which is amazing on it's own :x

my point: internet in america SUCKS.

i'm an avid P2P/DDL user... i use more than 1TB monthly most of the times

here we have extremely suck internet providers.. the only thing that disturbing here is that the billing is damn expensive every month.

Winny is a poor excuse for filesharing and will die out the way of Napster - Japan needs to learn that torrents are a far more reliable and untraceable way to download (whatever your download may be). It's quite paradoxical how the actual internet backbone of Japan is lightyears ahead of the rest of the world, yet the software and websites they run on it is ten years in the past at best. Japanese always seem to be rather slow on the uptake for web technologies, which is damn shame because of all the amazing hardware that exists here.

Anyway, my NTT fibre-optic line is 6000 yen a month and worth every penny of it. Advice to anyone coming to Japan - do not be fooled into getting YahooBB - their service is even more unrealiable than the connections in the states and UK, far slower than stated speeds, and will give you a

Winny is a poor excuse for filesharing and will die out the way of Napster - Japan needs to learn that torrents are a far more reliable and untraceable way to download (whatever your download may be). It's quite paradoxical how the actual internet backbone of Japan is lightyears ahead of the rest of the world, yet the software and websites they run on it is ten years in the past at best. Japanese always seem to be rather slow on the uptake for web technologies, which is damn shame because of all the amazing hardware that exists here.

Let me give you another example to demonstrate this~ Mixi. Mixi is the biggest social community site in Japan, but it basically consists of forums, photo uploads and a blog. The concept of facebook like applications hasnt even occured to them yet, it seems. I think Japan ha

Anyway, my NTT fibre-optic line is 6000 yen a month and worth every penny of it. Advice to anyone coming to Japan - do not be fooled into getting YahooBB - their service is even more unrealiable than the connections in the states and UK, far slower than stated speeds, and will give you a thoroughly biassed view of the internet in Japan being sucky...

Winny is a poor excuse for filesharing and will die out the way of Napster - Japan needs to learn that torrents are a far more reliable and untraceable way to download (whatever your download may be). It's quite paradoxical how the actual internet backbone of Japan is lightyears ahead of the rest of the world, yet the software and websites they run on it is ten years in the past at best. Japanese always seem to be rather slow on the uptake for web technologies, which is damn shame because of all the amazing hardware that exists here.

Let me give you another example to demonstrate this~ Mixi. Mixi is the biggest social community site in Japan, but it basically consists of forums, photo uploads and a blog. The concept of facebook like applications hasnt even occured to them yet, it seems. I think Japan has some wonderfully creative ideas in many areas, but internet applications is not one of them.

Anyway, my NTT fibre-optic line is 6000 yen a month and worth every penny of it. Advice to anyone coming to Japan - do not be fooled into getting YahooBB - their service is even more unrealiable than the connections in the states and UK, far slower than stated speeds, and will give you a thoroughly biassed view of the internet in Japan being sucky...

My local ISP provides very shoddy service for a large fee. This is, because there is no competition in the region. However, there is a loop hole to receive the service for free. I still pay for the lowest setting (they are still a company offering a service), but use the configuration for the highest setting. I do this, because (a) I don't believe the service is worth the fee; and (b) I really cannot stand how American companies milk all technologies until they are DEAD, and then offer a dated service as "NEW" for a hiked up fee.

every one has flie shared!

Here in Maryland there are service providers who cap their customers, but I have signed up for a provider that provides unlimited bandwidth. For years I have been P2Ping and torrenting and have finally been told to stop by my ISP. They turned off my internet for two days and gave me one strike on a 3 strike system before I would have to find another ISP. Nothing happened, which is good considering how many Tera Bytes I have uploaded and downloaded. haha