4 ms·

Isamu Kaneko, creator of the encrypted P2P file sharing program Winny, has died

86 points by hkmurakami 13y ago

Sorry, there is no English discussion yet and not even a mainstream media article on Kaneko's (handle: 47) death. However, his colleagues at the University of Tokyo are confirming his passing on Twitter and it is all but certain. Cause of death: cardiac arrest. 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. RIP.

new299 13y ago
Appears to be from a heart attack.
hkmurakami 13y ago
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_%28%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B0%E3%83%A9%E3%83%9E%E3%83%BC%29 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E5%AD%90%E5%8B%87_%2...
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  His lawyer confirms the news on his blog: http://danblog.cocolog-nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.html http://danblog.cocolog-nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.htm...
bulknews 13y ago
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.html http://danblog.cocolog-nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.htm...
mappu 13y ago
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 It provided a great service before eventually being superseded, and i imagine certain rizon channels will black out their topic lines.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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Look into freenet. The trick is to encrypt the content in such a way that you can't reasonably know what you are sharing.
  - eps 13y ago
    Freenet is nothing more than a proof of concept really.
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
"Kaneko also had his home searched and had the source code of Winny confiscated by the Kyoto Police." That's disgusting.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
xtracto 13y ago
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).

86 points by hkmurakami 13y ago

new299 13y ago

Appears to be from a heart attack.

hkmurakami 13y ago

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

hkmurakami 13y ago
His lawyer confirms the news on his blog: http://danblog.cocolog-nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.html http://danblog.cocolog-nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.htm...

bulknews 13y ago

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.html http://danblog.cocolog-nifty.com/index/2013/07/post-9e47.htm...

mappu 13y ago

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 13y ago

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 13y ago
Look into freenet. The trick is to encrypt the content in such a way that you can't reasonably know what you are sharing.
- eps 13y ago
  Freenet is nothing more than a proof of concept really.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago

"Kaneko also had his home searched and had the source code of Winny confiscated by the Kyoto Police." That's disgusting.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

xtracto 13y ago

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).