According to Yahoo! News, Japanese internet service provider, facing complaints from big media companies, are planning to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who downloads files illegally (like through Winny/Share, where most raws come from). Go here for more info. However, Danny Choo is reporting that instead of disconnecting users downloading files, but users who abuse bandwidth:

"The Japan Internet Providers Association released a press release which states that they are after heavy users of Winny and similar P2P software due to the load that those users are placing on the network and not because of any illegal copying. The extra load caused by heavy P2P users causes instability for other internet users."

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Inside Scanlation - TYPE-MOON

Do you think that this will cut down on the speed/availability of the anime/manga for people not in japan?

That's what I was thinking, but it really shouldn't effect release speed and availability. People always have a way around things if it does get vicious.

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Won't really effect those who buy their raws. My guess is if winny/share goes down, raws will be hard to find but it'd reduce a lot of those speed groups out there. But then again, they'd more than likely move to another p2p instead and the process repeats itself..

I agree with that completely.

Well it may come to this point, but from what I read so far Share
is the most secure when it come to hide user IP address from
all of the P2P software...torrents and emule show your IP address
whenever you're connected to some other peers and Share uses
an encrypted IP address in form of a 'node' address and is less prone
to the address being hijacked...

Well that's all my opinion, but maybe we can see new form af filesharing
soon.

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ahh, thats true, but I've seen a "use encrypted ip" option or something of the like from torrents as well.

but on topic, i think reanimated838uk has the right idea on this...

"Instability for other internet users" my rear. Well, any old excuse I guess.

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AstroNerdBoy's Anime and Manga Blog

Encrypting you IP means that they don't know who's downloading what (thus the whole anonymous thing), but what they'd likely do would be have providers simply make an alarm to detect when your bandwidth acts like you're on a P2P network, and automatically lowers your speed by 90%. Wouldn't matter if your IP was encrypted or if you were actually doing anything wrong. It's what Comcast got in trouble for earlier this year.

Personally, I think this community would be in much better shape if everyone had to buy their own raws. Yay for the return of legitimacy. Down with jackasses (and god awful scans... I can't believe people actually want to read crap like that).

ppl are like roaches , especially on the net. No permanent way to keep em down.

The providers already have the tools for identifying people who use P2P - I know because my bandwidth gets 'shaped' every day because of it - P2P downloads drop to old dial-up speeds between mid-afternoon and midnight here (despite having an 'unlimited' account lol). This has been going on for more than 6 months already in the UK.

Truer words have never been spoken.

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Always remember what Jesus said "Once you've worn chilled boxers you never go back..."
Saint Oniisan

Virgin Media?

This seems like it's just there to give a slight scare to some people. Like jumping out of a tree to scare an on-goer. But after the on-goer recovers, they'll just punch the person who scared them.

Comcast DID get in trouble for limiting bandwidth (I'm assuming that's what you are referring to. Your statement was a bit ambiguous as to whether it was the bandwidth or lowering bandwidth), but I doubt they're going to stop any one any more because of the stink that caused across the Internet and general populace.

The fact is, the U.S. government ruled that P2Ps like Bittorrent are useful, and they aren't going to stop its use. It's almost impossible to really track a "legitimate" download from an illegal download, and tracking every single person who uses BT or IRC and what they're dl'ing is virtually impossible for any company THAT big. They can't "stop" it. They can only monitor the largest bandwidth eaters.

You can't stop the signal (if I may quote), and there'll always be ways to get information and media out.