Sophos Cloud Optix
People who write or deliberately spread malware can expect to be fined or receive up to three years in prison, under laws enacted by the Japanese parliament today.
Up until now, you could only expect to feel your collar felt by the computer crime authorities in Japan if the malware you had created had caused some damage, now just the act of writing it would seem to be enough.
Under the new law, police will also be able to seize the email communications of suspects from ISPs, raising concerns amongst the country’s privacy campaigners who have warned of the police getting excessive powers.
According to news reports individuals who create and supply computer viruses “without any reasonable excuse” can face up to three years in jail, or a fines of up to ¥500,000 (approximately US $6,000).
Acquisition and storage of viruses is punishable by a prison sentence of up to two years, or ¥300,000 in fines.
One hopes that common sense will prevail and that those with a legitimate reason to store and acquire malware (anti-virus vendors for instance!) don’t find themselves facing such charges..
Virus-writing isn’t completely unknown in Japan, of course.
For instance, last year we reported the arrest of a man who had spread malware via the Winny peer-to-peer file-sharing network, changing the icons of infected computers to those of an orange cartoon octopus.
At the time, police officers claimed that the man had infected approximately 50,000 computers with the malware.
I commend Japan for their action in outlawing virus writing. This is certainly a step in the right direction!
To answer the question "Do you think laws like this will make any difference?" then I think it will not make much difference. However, it is a good thing that they now have a law for it, so it becomes a criminal act which then is punishable by law.
I think it's hard to enforce a law when it's hard to define what it is that's illegal.. For instance, the rootkit Sony put on some of it's audio CDs a few years ago was clearly malware. Rootkits are malware. It meets the standard reported in this article anyway–I haven't read the Japanese law. It was deliberately spread by Sony to unwitting customers who played these CDs on their computers. It's FAR, FAR more harmful than a DDoS attack. Would this be punishable under the law in question? If not, why should Sony be above the law? If you don't believe Sony execs should serve time in jail for this malware attack but you DO believe LulzSec SHOULD, why?
Stock shares?
What CD's specifically are you refering too? I want to the next time i go the music store.
Japan is ahead of the world. The web is full of either viruses/ads or often both.
Ad block works to some degree but it’s making corporate people find ways ot hijack it by making sites either not function correctly or beg you to turn it off.
What we need next are laws that force ads to no larger then a certain size so it will not take over either a desktop computer,smartphone or the new coming *watch* phones that someday big industry will try to push like the “Mobile first mobile only” strategy that’s a big mistake.