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2 Arrested for Allegedly Making E-Book Copying Software
posted on by Egan Loo
Kyoto Police arrested Wataru Ishida, the 37-year-old president of the Yokohama-based software developer Internal, and a 28-year-old Internal employee of Chinese citizenry on Wednesday on charges of violating the Copyright Law of Japan. The two are accused of making a program for making unauthorized copies of electronic books; they are the first people known to be arrested in Japan for developing such a program.
According to the police announcement, the two suspects made the program Komisuke 3, which can remove the anti-copying feature of e-books, for release by Internal. The two suspects denied the charges.
The website for the product is no longer online, but it began selling the software last March for about 6,000 to 18,000 yen (about US$60-180). The company allegedly sold about 2,000 units by December for about 28 million yen (US$280,000).
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