Two Men Arrested Over Copyright Infringement
on an Illegal Mobile Music Site 'Daisan Sekai'
Tokyo: The Recording Industry Association of Japan today announced that the Kyoto Police Department arrested two men under suspicion of copyright (neighboring rights) infringement conducted on a mobile music download site, called Daisan Sekai (The Third World).
Among those two suspects; one is 28-year-old man living in Himeji city, Hyogo, and set up and operated the mobile music site called Daisan Sekai (The Third World), where he allegedly offered copyrighted music files for mobile phones users without license from three record companies; i.e. Dreamusic Inc., Sony Music Records Inc. and Avex Entertainment Inc.(RIAJ members).
Another suspect is a 53-year-old man living in Kawanishi city, Hyogo, and allegedly conspired with the 28- year-old man, uploaded copyrighted music files on the said mobile site for downloading by mobile phone users, without license from Sony Music Japan International Inc.
This mobile site is regarded one of the most popular illegal mobile music site, estimated to have more than one million users. Also it is remarkable that this is the first criminal case against illegal uploading of mobile single tracks.
Mobile music market, having grown up to 680 million US dollars in 2007, is now one of the largest pillars in Japanese music industry. On the other hand, mobile piracy has become a big threat against healthy growth of the mobile music market, as it has been estimated that more than 399 million illegal music files were downloaded in 2007, according to RIAJ survey.
The Recording Industry Association of Japan, October 21, 2008
Read the RIAJ press release here. (pdf)