Winny File Sharing Damages Japanese Entertainment Industry

The Association of Copyright for Computer Software (ACCS) and the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) have released a report estimating the damage caused by the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program Winny to the Japanese entertainment industry.

A test was conducted on October 10th, where Winny activities were closely monitored during a 6-hour time period. According to the report, there are currently over 210,000 Winny users illegally pirating anime, manga, games, softwares and music, causing over 9.5 billion yen worth of damage to the Japanese entertainment industry.

According to the data gathered, the Winny network currently carries over 0.61 million music files (1.95 billion yen), 1.17 million games (5.13 billion yen), 0.18 million anime episodes(1.72 billion yen) and 1.59 million volumes of manga (0.7 billion yen).

Winny is a Japanese file sharing software based on the Freenet network. Winny was craeted by Isamu Kaneko, a research assistant at the University of Tokyo. Kaneko was arrested On May 10, 2004 for copyright violation.

Source: ITmedia News

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Possibility Space and Warrior Epic

Possibility Space has announced that it is actively seeking video game investors who are interested in running its F2P MMO, Warrior Epic, with exclusive control rights in India, China, Spain, France, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and Europe.

Warrior Epic is a free-to-play, online action RPG. The setting of the game is an original fantasy universe, where players can utilize a wide selection of warrior classes to go out raiding dungeons in a variety of novel environments. The game is currently approaching a beta phase.

The game is still in development, but is causing quite a stir on the net. Brice Lucas, the Community Manager for Possibility Space, has done several interviews about the upcoming title on some high profile gaming websites.

http://www.onrpg.com/games_articles/view/759
http://www.incgamers.com/2/article/6893/1
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/15456
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/warriorepic/interview.html
http://pc.gamezone.com/news/11_19_07_01_17PM.htm

Warrior Epic has quite a few new features for the genre, some of which we hope will resonate with players. We use a unique download-on-demand game delivery system that will let players start playing almost immediately after visiting our website. And perhaps most significantly, the full version of the game is free to play and will be continuously updated with new content.

Although Warrior Epic is our first title at Possibility Space, the studio is managed by veterans of the mainstream game industry. Their previous work includes hits like StarCraft, Age of Mythology, Gears of War, Command and Conquer III, Battle for Middle Earth, and more.

Possibility Space is putting a huge emphasis on community development, as it maintains constant and direct contact with its fans through the offical website forums.

The official Warrior Epic website can be found at:

http://www.warriorepic.com