A man was arrested Monday on suspicion of stealing about 500,000 yen from a postal savings account using LimeWire file-sharing software, police said.

According to the Nagano prefectural police, this is the first known case of the software being used to gain illegal access to an Internet banking system.

Arrested was Mitsugu Tominaga, 34, of Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, who is on trial on charges of violating the Antiunauthorized Access Law.

Junichi Iwai, 33, of Hatogaya in the prefecture, who had been indicted on the same charge in an earlier case, was sent to the prosecutors for the same charge.

In February, the two men were arrested on suspicion of withdrawing 950,000 yen by illegally accessing an Internet banking account at Hachijuni Bank in Nagano.

According to the police, Tominaga and Iwai obtained the password for a Japan Post postal savings Internet account and transferred 500,000 yen from the account of a Ishikawa Prefecture man to Iwai’s account.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20060725TDY02005.htm

About 1.8 million people in Japan are active users of file-sharing software, a sharp increase from a year ago, according to a survey by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), TV broadcasters and other industry groups.

The figure is equal to about 3.5 percent of all Internet users and represents a big jump from last year’s survey, which put the number at about 1.3 million, or about 2.7 percent of Internet users. The survey was conducted online in mid-June and gathered 18,596 responses.

The average number of downloads per user per year was 194 files, of which about 87 were music, 79 were movies, 11 were images, nine were software applications and eight were documents.

The most popular file-sharing application being used was Winny, according to the survey. WinMX was ranked second and Limewire third. BitTorrent clients, popular in the West, were fifth on the list, with only 6 percent of people using it as their main application.

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au

As record companies this week filed lawsuits against alleged illegal downloaders, one of whom is from Framingham, music lovers and musicians unloaded on downloading.

This week, a suit was filed by the Recording Industry Association of America on behalf of record companies such as Arista, Sony and Capitol. The lawsuit accused 76 people nationwide, including 23-year-old Omri Duek, of Framingham.

The suit accuses Duek of illegally distributing copyrighted music on the Internet, through such programs as Limewire.

Despite the cost, White said he buys CDs, because he likes to support musicians and prefers the CD over the MP3.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com

Beth Hudgens says she’s no pirate, despite what the recording industry contends.

The Montgomery woman on Thursday found out four record companies filed a federal lawsuit against her for illegally distributing copyrighted music on the Internet.

Hudgens is one of seven Alabamians targeted by the Recording Industry Association of America in a series of copyright infringement lawsuits filed this week.

The defendants face civil penalties that could reach into the thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees and $750 per illegally downloaded song, according to MusicUnited.org, a Web site that discourages illegal downloading of music.

Hudgens claims her 16-year-old daughter was duped into sharing music on LimeWire.com, a music downloading Web site.

“My daughter was just misled,” Hudgens said. “Now they want me to pay thousands of dollars, and I just don’t have it. It was totally by accident that this happened.”

An official at LimeWire didn’t respond to efforts to seek comment.

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com

After a recent issue with the RIAA, LimeWire has been noticeably quiet on the public relations front. However, even without the added attention, LimeWire is proving they have what it takes to remain one of the best file sharing application available

3 years and 86 Million downloads later, LimeWire is the top downloaded application on Download.com, edging out Adware, Spyware Doctor, and Morpheus last week.

In total LimeWire managed 926,598 downloads. The next closes file sharing program was Morheus (which ranked 5th) saw 380,872 downloads.

An announcement on the Lime Wire blog notes the arrival of version 4.12 which should help the file sharing company continue their dominance.

As well the development team touched on the upcoming BitTorrent and “custom” DHT (Distributed Hash Table) integration.

http://www.revolutionportal.com/1/article/103.html

A group of music companies, including Sony BMG, Virgin Records and Warner Bros. Records, have accused LimeWire and the company’s officers of copyright infringement, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New York. LimeWire produces software that’s often used to create copies of music recordings and then distribute them over the Web.

The recording industry is asking for compensatory and punitive damages, such as $150,000 for every song distributed without permission.

LimeWire is “devoted essentially to the Internet piracy of plaintiffs’ sound recordings,” the record companies charge in their suit. “The scope of infringement caused by defendants is staggering.”

The recording industry continues to pressure file-sharing companies that refuse to do one of two things: either adopt a business model that compensates record companies, or shut down.

Last week, the makers of the Kazaa file-sharing system agreed to pay the record industry $115 million and use a filtering technology to prevent users from distributing files that infringe on copyrights. Other companies that have either gone out of business or altered their business models are Grokster, WinMx and BearShare.

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