

Isamu Kaneko, creator of the encrypted P2P file sharing program Winny, has died - hkmurakami
http://togetter.com/li/530045
Sorry, there is no English discussion yet and not even a mainstream media article on Kaneko&#x27;s (handle: 47) death. However, his colleagues at the University of Tokyo are confirming his passing on Twitter and it is all but certain.<p>Cause of death: cardiac arrest.<p>While Sean Parker creates Napster and goes on to help make Facebook what it is today, Kaneko is persecuted by authorities for years, finally wins a not guilty verdict two years ago, and just as things were looking up, this.<p>RIP.
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hkmurakami
couldn't find a mainstream media outlet covering his passing, but with Univ of
Tokyo colleagues confirming his death on Twitter, it is all but certain.

His early death was undoubtedly brought upon by the massive stress he was put
under during his years of court battles which were brought upon him for his
role in "assisting copyright infringement". He finally won a not guitly
verdict in 2011.

Things were finally starting to look up for him. He was back at his old nest
(Tokyo U) as a special instructor since 2012/12\. He was a man who could still
make considerable contributions the field of computing. Then this.

RIP.

[https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E5%AD%90%E5%8B%87_%2...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E5%AD%90%E5%8B%87_%28%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B0%E3%83%A9%E3%83%9E%E3%83%BC%29)

~~~
hkmurakami
His lawyer confirms the news on his blog: [http://danblog.cocolog-
nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.htm...](http://danblog.cocolog-
nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.html)

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mappu
Winny (and subsequently Share / PD) were responsible for bringing a lot of
japanese culture to the western world, whether that was legal or not (comiket
scans..). It provided a great service before eventually being superseded, and
i imagine certain rizon channels will black out their topic lines.

There's not much i can say to commemorate someone i've never met or had any
interaction with, but even as people are born and die, i hope we forever keep
the passion of using technology to take japanese culture throughout the world.

------
visarga
By the way, is there an anonymous P2P file sharing system that does not have a
central point of failure?

I mean, is this even possible in theory? An attacker would just need to join
the cloud and record IP addresses of peers they download from. Then they could
sue for copyright infringement or aiding in copyright infringement, even if
the P2P network proxies requests between nodes to hide source IPs from the
destinations.

~~~
tomjen3
Look into freenet. The trick is to encrypt the content in such a way that you
can't reasonably know what you are sharing.

~~~
hkmurakami
Aren't the successors to Winny (Share and Perfect Dark) like this? I remember
one of these programs that I tried out in the past had these hash files that
were seeded to others and I had no idea what files I was holding.

~~~
creamyhorror
Yep, I actually submitted the Perfect Dark wiki article to HN after reading
about Isamu's passing:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark_(P2P)‎](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark_\(P2P\)‎)

You dedicate some space on your hard drive to the program, which then stores
chunks of unidentified files there and constantly uploads to other clients -
it's true decentralized file storage. It was a cool setup when I tried in back
in '08 or so, very cyberpunk with its anonymity and plain-text-on-black UI,
and I enjoyed reading the Japanese comments (often with SJIS text art) posted
by others on the internal chatstream. In the end I didn't actually use it for
anything, but it felt like a futuristic BBS.

It would be interesting to see a global equivalent emerge, maybe built upon
bittorent DHTs/magnet links.

------
leke
"Kaneko also had his home searched and had the source code of Winny
confiscated by the Kyoto Police."

That's disgusting.

------
bulknews
slightly more credible source - his attorney on winny's case confirmed he
passed away 7/6 6:55 pm JST due to a heart attack. [http://danblog.cocolog-
nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.htm...](http://danblog.cocolog-
nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.html)

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xtracto
Is this Winny related somehow to WinMX? I remember finding really good
documents in WinMX about 10 years ago (or more) which where not available in
any other p2p network (GameDev magazine ISOs is one example that comes to
mind).

------
new299
Appears to be from a heart attack.

