Japanese ISPs To Ban File Sharers. NOT!

The article titled "Japanese ISPs To Ban File Sharers" drew a lot of attention on TechCrunch recently. The article is rootless. Japanese ISPs observe net neutrality reasonably well and there is no sign of weakening of the attitude.

The origin and the chain of misreporting
The misreporting is originated from a Japanese article on Yomiuri Online, which is run by a Japanese newspaper having the biggest circulation in Japan. The article misreports the Japanese ISPs effort to reasonably restrict residential users' net traffic.

After it's posted, the following events happened.

1. The Yomiuri's Japanese article was translated into English and posted as "Winny copiers to be cut off from Internet".
2. The above article caught attention of TrentFreak and the article "Japanese ISPs Agree to Ban Pirates from the Internet" was posted.
3. The above article caught attention of TechCrunch and was led to the article mentioned at the beginning of this posting.

The nature of the original Japanese article
The crux of the original article is as follows.

The nation's four Internet provider organizations have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of users found to repeatedly use Winny and other file-sharing programs to illegally copy gaming software and music, it was learned Friday.
...
According to the new agreement, copyright organizations would notify providers of Internet protocol addresses used by those who repeatedly make copies illegally, using special detection software. The providers would then send warning e-mails to the users based on the IP addresses of the computers used to connect to the Internet. If contacted users did not then stop their illegal copying, the providers would temporarily disconnect them from the Internet for a specified period of time or cancel their service-provision contracts.

Two days later on Mar 17, Japan Internet Providers Association (JAIPA) published the draft of "The Guideline on Traffic Control Policy"(in Japanese only) and started gathering public comments. The draft is endorsed by three other ISP associations in Japan. It's a guideline on which individual ISPs would set their traffic control policy.

Most likely, the four ISP agreement mentioned in the Yomiuri's article is about the guideline draft. But the draft doesn't mention measures against repeated Winny uses and the scheme for copyright holders.

There are two possibilities here:

1. The Yomiuri article has some truth in it when written. But the guideline draft was changed after the article was posted.
2. The Yomiruri reporter learned about the guideline draft from unreliable sources and/or lacked necessary domain knowledge hence forged the article.

To me, 2 is more likely. I guess the draft was published as scheduled on Monday. Then, it's difficult to make such a change in two days after the article was posted.

Legitimacy of the traffic control policy guideline
Please be noted that in Japan, 100Mbps Internet connection for home users via fiber optics is widely provided at 40 to 60 US$ a month. As of the end of 2007, there are 11 million fiber optics Internet subscribers in Japan. And there are 13 million DSL Internet subscribers, 4 million cable Internet subscribers.

As mentioned before, the guideline is about reasonably restricting residential net users' traffic.
Given the number of very high speed Internet users, Japanese ISPs have no option but restrict heavy users' traffic. The draft mentions that 1% of the users generate 50% of the net traffic.

The guideline draft observes net neutrality and communication privacy well.

Addendum on April 14, 2008
I had a chance to talk to a Japanese ISP executive and a central government bureaucrat dealing with the Internet. They said that the National Police Agency wanted to implement a rule along the line of the one reported in the Yomiuri article. But both ISPs and the ministry covering electronic communication have no intention to have such a rule. The Yomiuri reporter totally misunderstood the situation.