“I was touched that so many of you came to Shibuya,” wrote the prime minister, whose frequent Facebook posts cover everything from a college reunion to a foreign policy debate. “There were some leftists with microphones and drums in the audience who tried hard, with hatred, to interrupt our speeches. But I must say that gave us fight. Thank You. A child in front laughed them off, saying ‘Quiet!’ Admirable. Please remember that those are representatives of embarrassing adults.”

"A situation has been created by which illegally submitted documents can be easily viewed," chief judge Hisaki Kobayashi was quoted as saying by the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

An expert panel to the NPA, which was looking into measures to combat crimes abusing the Tor system, compiled a report on April 18 stating that blocking online communications at the discretion of site administrators will be effective in preventing such crimes. Based on the recommendation, the NPA will urge the Internet provider industry and other entities to make voluntary efforts to that effect.

On 25 January, Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications along with various motion picture and music associations announced their latest copyright protection measure, dubbed “Operation Decoy File.”

The plan involves inserting files onto Japan's popular P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing networks such as Winny and Share which appear to contain popular copyrighted material. However, once downloaded, the file is revealed to be a message appealing the user to reconsider their wicked ways.

A Warning from the Organization to Raise Awareness of Copyright

Files with the same name as this contain content which is in violation of copyright when distributed over P2P networks such as Winny or Share.

Knowingly downloading and of course uploading files that are protected by copyright law without the consent of the owner over the Internet is illegal copyright infringement. Please stop immediately.

Also, from 1 October 2012, downloading content which is known to be available for sale is punishable by a maximum 2-year prison sentence and/or 2,000,000 yen[US$21,000] fine.

Our copyright organization is working to eliminate copyright infringement by file sharing software. In addition to consulting the police to obtain the disclosure of user's identities, we want to focus on user education.

Japanese P2Pers have been discussing this new tactic and attempting to track down warning files in order to suss out any noticeable differences between it and the file it's supposed to be. (Yes, I know. One will be a warning and the other will be an actual piece of entertainment. But noticeable in terms of search results...)

The Ministry's statement indicates that this new warning system is only a test, albeit one that will stick around if there's any noticeable downturn in file sharing. Rocket News reports that some members of free-for-all discussion forum (and inspiration for 4chan) 2 Channel [2ch] are taking this to mean that the government may be considering uploading virus-tainted files to the various networks. As tempting as that may seem to some of the more vindictive members of the copyright industry, it's highly doubtful the Japanese government would be willing to brick computers to deter file sharing, draconian IP laws or no.

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Since last year 2channel, Japan’s largest internet forum, has been subject to pressure from Tokyo police. According to a January 2012 post by Avery (2channel Fights Police Pressure, So-Called “Viral Marketers”), the whole police investigation began after Fuji TV aired a sensational news report about drug dealers making posts on the site. The news report was aired only a few days after 2channel users helped organize street protests condemning Fuji TV’s alleged anti-Japanese bias.

"Their evidence for the drug trade was a single post from 2010 that used code words to refer to MDMA, marijuana, and cocaine….investigators are calling 2ch a “hotbed of crime” because moderators did not delete the single post from 2010. (Over 1,800,000 posts are made on 2channel every day.)"

Nishimura will be charged with abetting drug dealing. However, some twitter users have pointed out that the statute of limitations for the drug law in question is 3 years, and Nishimura sold 2channel more than 3 years ago.

A bug in our online system resulted in a small group of US-based customers being offered international pricing instead of their in-country pricing. In the large majority of cases, there was no price difference, but for some books where publishers set two different prices, the international one was displayed. This issue has now been resolved. We will be working directly with those customers affected over the next month to examine their accounts and provide them with a refund should it be owed. We will be contacting affected customers directly, but in the meantime if anyone has any questions related to their account, we ask that they please call our Support Line at 1-855-732-3662. 

While some retailers like Amazon like to selectively discount prices in order to get you in the door, other sites like Kobo prefer to jack up the prices charged to their regular customers.

Earlier today Mike Cane hooked me up with a friend of his on Twitter. @RevBobMIB was browsing the Kobo eBookstore this morning when he noticed something odd. The pricing seemed strangely inconsistent, and after checking the price of the ebook mentioned above he discovered a fascinating secret about Kobo.

As you can see in this screenshot and this screenshot, Kobo offers some of their customers a lower price than the price offered to other customers. Here is a composite, and please note that I have seen these prices as well:

Hoffelder pointed out that prices may vary in different markets and some price fluctuation is normal, depending on geographic location. But Kobo's inexplicable price shifts aren't related to market or geographic variances.

Kobo is changing the prices shown to a single customer, browsing from a single computer, getting online from a single IP address.

A lot has happened in the couple weeks since I reported that story. After exchanging a few emails with a Kobo programmer it became clear that this was not a simple bug, nor was it a consistent one. While I still don’t know how the bug works I do know that the simple and obvious solutions don’t fix it.

And oh yeah, the bug is still happening today.

My earliest confirmed report comes from MobileRead, and it is dated 10 September:

Is anyone else getting different prices on the checkout page? For instance, I want to get “Catching Fire” and it’s listed at $5.99. I click on the “buy now” button and the price jumps to $11.97. I contact Kobo’s customer service and they said that I should be logged in as to get the correct pricing. I log in and the same thing happens. I contacted them again, and they told me that the correct price is $11.97. But it’s still listed at $5.99?? Any ideas??

So Kobo has had this bug on their website for at least a month. As bad as that sounds the actual situation is very likely worse.

Oh I had a similar issue. The price of the ebook I bought was much more lower on the website than what I was charged for on my credit card, that took a few weeks to resolve as well. They gave me a credit for the difference, but I did phone them about 4-5 times and emailed them at least once a week.

When I go to the Kobo store I will see a book for $7.99 but when I log in the price updates to $8.99. Is this because the default price is in $US but when I log in using my Canadian they update to $CDN? I’m just wondering.

Based on my own experiences, the 2 readers who claim they contacted Kobo customer service are very likely telling the truth. I have seen in the past at least one occasion where Kobo customer service got a complaint from a customer, responded, but appeared to not have forwarded the complaint to the relevant party inside the company who could have fixed the error.

Speaking of Kobo’s questionable customer service, there was a period of at least 3 months last year where Kobo gave out this blog as the warranty repair site for the Slick ereaders. I kid you not.

I know a number of people will step forward to defend Kobo, but I’m not sure how. A month-long bug which over-charges some readers is indefensible. Customer service dept failing to forward a bug report is indefensible.

With an apparent stalemate between the US administration and legislators about ratification procedures and the European Union out after the Parliament voted against the agreement, it looks as if there is still an uphill battle to get to reach that number.

Besides the EU and Japan, seven governments have signed ACTA (Australia, Canada, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States). Switzerland has not signed nor ratified.

“Not much is happening on the Canadian front,” wrote Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa and long-time ACTA observer. “Canada signed ACTA, but has not ratified. Ratification would likely require some legislative amendments,” Geist said, and until those changes are introduced the country would not be positioned to ratify. There may be, according to Geist, linkage between ACTA and CETA (the Canada-EU Trade Agreement) under negotiation.

Britton Broun, media advisor of the Economic Group in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment of New Zealand, responded to Intellectual Property Watch by saying: “While New Zealand has signed ACTA, the government has not yet taken a decision on its ratification.”

But on 31 August, a committee of the House of Representatives, and on 6 September, the full House of Representatives pushed ACTA through, each time counting only the votes of the ruling party.

“To ratify an international treaty without the attendance of all opposition parties means a collapse of democracy in Japan,” warned Suzawa.

• Robots are good at tasks that are dull, dirty or dangerous -- so they can be useful for all kinds of farming. Robots are helping dairy farmers to milk cows, and robots can plant and harvest fields -- but human farmers won't be completely replaced just yet. [url]
• Flying, lightweight agricultural robots could help monitor crops and spray herbicides more intelligently. Zapping bugs from a remote-controlled quadcopter sounds like it could be a better game than Farmville. [url]
• Japan's Ministry of Agriculture is experimenting with a robot farm project in a 600 acre that was devastated by a tsunami. Over 59,000 acres farmland were damaged by the earthquake, flooding and nuclear fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but robots could help clean up and revive agriculture in northeast Japan. [url]

a.) Bite the bullet and start handing out refunds
b.) Start patching like hell and fire your current Customer Service team
c.) Drain all bank accounts and reorganize under the name Net Sortie, LLC.
d.) Whistle nonchalantly while sweeping bad reviews under the rug

Rakuten launched the Kobo Touch in Japan with the expectation that they would dominate their home market. They are native to the country, and Rakuten does have a sizable retail presence there. Given their technical and CS resources, you’d think they would have been able to pull this off.

Unfortunately, it now looks like Rakuten has paved the way for Amazon to dominate yet another ebook market.This launch is rapidly turning into a debacle and it’s going to damage Rakuten’s reputation. And according to some of the tweets I’ve seen (in Japanese) it already is.

It’s been just under a week since the Kobo Touch started shipping in Japan, and things are going so well that Rakuten has removed from their website all the reviews of the Kobo Touch.

No, seriously, all of the reviews are down – both good and bad. I suppose there were too many people writing things like “I’m going to buy a Kindle” and that upset someone at Rakuten.

Luckily one of Rakuten’s potential customers tipped me to the story, including giving me a link to a blog that had collected responses and a screenshot of the review page before Raskuten removed it. That’s why I can show you things like this:

If you can’t see the image above, it says that the Kobo Touch has a 3 star rating largely due to the vast number of 1 star reviews.

Update: My source found a Google Cache page of reviews. Thanks, Bibo!

Folks, they took the reviews down from the website so new customers wouldn’t be warned about the many problems. I want you to look past the fact they did it and think about how customers will feel once they discover the deception. That is what will make this a major debacle and not merely an embarrassment for Rakuten.

A bad launch could be recovered from. This is closer to being a systematic effort to lie to their customers. Okay, eventually people will forgive Rakuten, but in the short run this debacle could drive readers to Amazon.

The current action probably doesn't presage a massive crackdown on every infringing use, since that would involve arresting a significant fraction of the Japanese population. It's more likely to be an attempt to put the frighteners on people in the hope that everyone will stop downloading files and cease making backups. As we know from similar situations, that may work for a few months. But once things die down, people will go back to doing what they did before until the next time the Japanese authorities decide to make an example of someone, and the whole pointless cycle begins again.

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Of course, if any of those participants in this never-ending cycle stood back and looked at what was happening, they would see that the very fact the copyright companies keep coming back for more and harsher copyright laws offers clear proof the current approach just isn't working. Instead, they seem to believe that even though it has failed to work every time in the past, if the penalties could just be made sufficiently cruel and painful, suddenly everything would be OK.

Unfortunately, it looks like it's Japan's turn to undertake this exercise in futility:

Japan’s legislature has approved a bill revising the nation’s Copyright Law to add criminal penalties for downloading copyrighted material or backing up content from a DVD. The penalties will come into effect in October.

The Upper House of the Japanese Diet approved the bill by a vote of 221-12, less than a week after the measure cleared the lower house with almost no opposition. Violators risk up to two years in prison or fines up to two million yen (about $25,000).

Perhaps dimly aware that tough sanctions won't work – or maybe just greedy – some music groups want Japanese ISPs to install a system that they claim can spot unauthorized uploads even before they reach the Internet. As TorrentFreak explains:

Once a match is found, rightholders want ISPs to automatically block the allegedly infringing content. But according to one report, there may even be requests to send out warning letters to uploaders. If implemented this would amount to the most invasive "3 strikes" style regime anywhere in the world.

This latest call for total surveillance on top of probably the harshest laws passed yet against unauthorized downloads raises an important question: when the current measures fail -- as they surely will -- what will the copyright industries demand next in a further forlorn attempt to deter file sharing? Life imprisonment? Amputation of the mousing fingers?

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• Chinese Oreos are NOT what you'd expect if you grew up in the US. Kraft localized Oreos for the Chinese palate, and Chinese Oreos can be found with green tea flavored filling.. and in rectangular-shaped cookies. [url]
• There are a bunch of recipes for homemade Oreos on the internets. Rolling your own Oreos allows you to make them any size you want... (and vegan if you wish). [url]
• The Oreo turns 100 years old this year on March 6th. That's a pretty long history of "twist, lick and dunk" -- and Kraft is celebrating with a limited edition of Birthday Cake Oreos. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

The police and public prosecutors should realize the negative psychological effect that their actions must have had on people trying to develop new computer technology.

On the preceding day, Friday, September 30, an international symposium entitled, “Global Intellectual Property Strategy and the Reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake: Eliminating Counterfeit and Pirated Products through ACTA”, will be held in Sendai as a side event of the signing ceremony.

"We met with Sony on May 6 and 13, and basically we want two things from them," Kazushige Nobutani, director of the Media and Content Industry department at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told Dow Jones Newswires.

He listed two areas where it requires further explanation before approval will be given following the incidents regarding its PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment videogame services.

"The first is preventative measures. As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference," he said, adding that he could not provide details on the outstanding issues for security reasons.

The second was in how Sony hoped to regain consumer confidence over personal data such as credit card information.

"There were similar cases in the past that were caused by other firms, and we are asking Sony whether their measures are good enough when compared to countermeasures taken in the past," he said.