Winmx is still very popular in Japan it seems
http://akira.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/andreas/blog/archives/2006/05/what-google-trends-says-about-p2p-in-japan.htmlApparently, Winny is still a big hit when it comes to search queries—don’t know if this high volume of requests is an adequate reflection of its market share though.
WinMX is also surprisingly well represented, although interest is clearly declining. And then, the surprise: Bittorrent is merely a blip on the radar.
This seems to confirm my personal experience here in Tokyo though: the number of people who has heard of Bittorrent (copyright specialists included) is very small.
Even on the Copyright Subcommittee’s 2nd session about file-sharing I attended last year, there was absolutely no mention of Bittorrent. Some explanation about the sudden jumps in the graphs:
1. On May 10, 2004, Winny developer Isamu Kaneko is arrested for suspected conspiracy to commit copyright violation.
2. Around September 21, 2005, the WinMX network ends its operations. The Winny spike might be related to the WinMX shutdown (people searching for other P2P software), but there is probably also another explanation: on September 20, the release date of Isamu Kaneko’s book, Winny (The Technology behind Winny), is announced
The reasons givven for jumps in the graph seem a bit artificial but its good to see that winmx and winny are both alive and well in Japan.
These interesting figures of p2p usage are backed up by figures from this site indicating that items like the peer guardian tutorial in Japanese is one of the top reads for this month so far, amazing really.
