4 arrested for alleged sale of child porn

Police arrested four men on suspicion of online distribution of DVDs containing child pornography.

Websites selling such DVDs continue to operate despite the so-called content blocking system launched last year, which blocks access to websites containing child pornography.

The four had allegedly circumvented the system by simply typing the sites’ Internet protocol (IP) addresses, which consist of a series of numbers instead of URLs, in the browsers’ addresses bar. Police said they earned more than 100 million yen annually.

Those arrested Monday are Yoshiyuki Hayashi, 48, of Setagaya Ward, Tokyo; Eiki Watanabe, 29, from Kawasaki; Yusuke Morishige, 38, of Meguro Ward, Tokyo; and Takumi Tanaka, 20, from Fujimino, Saitama Prefecture.

According to police, they allegedly sold three child pornography DVDs to a man in his 50s through a website on Dec. 16. They made the DVDs by copying indecent images posted on the Internet.

An IP address, which consists of a series of numbers, is given to every website on the Internet, but sites usually show URLs in address bars.

As the blocking system launched in April 2011 only targeted URLs, Hayashi and others used IP numbers for their websites. If users clicked banner ads, they were automatically routed to the sites.

The men reportedly created 70 to 80 sites and promoted them, saying users should hurry to use them since the blocking system would terminate the network connection. Police confiscated about 20,000 DVDs at an apartment in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, their base, and believes all of them contain child pornography.

The Yomiuri Shimbun, July 4, 2012
See oroginal article at:http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120703003984.htm