Wired reports that Japanese police working with the country’s Cyber Crime Unit have nabbed a 19-year-old for allegedly distributing software online capable of bypassing Nintendo Wii copy protection. The suspect has been charged with violation of Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
The Saitama Prefectural Police made a statement regarding the arrest of the Kyoto student on Tuesday, but the Cyber Crime Unit had been aware of the website since December. Police maintain that the software had been uploaded to the site on Feb. 28. They say it has since been downloaded roughly 6,500 times over the next three months.
Japanese-language publication Asahi Shimbun reports that the suspect told police that because “my website was making money…I kept it running.” The student says that the almost 200,000 yen (or $2,500), gained over the past 18 months, didn’t actually come from sale of the software, but from online advertisements.
The software would allow users to play games copied to a USB-attached hard drive on their Wii, as well as operate unauthorized software on the console. Prior to the software being uploaded on the site, the suspect kept up posted information on how to manually mod a Wii to perform similar functions.
Image Courtesy of Flickr/Ray Dehler
