| >I recall several netizens posting concern about the buyer of 4chan, how he ran some other Japanese sites into the ground. The situation with 2channel was actually a business dispute, at its core. That's not to say Hiroyuki isn't shady, but Jim Watkins/NTTEC (who played an important part in it, and was on the board of 2channel) was also at fault. Summary: Jim Watkins's company/NTTEC wrote something like 4chan Premium for 2channel back in the early 00's. This was intended to help keep costs under control, and it succeeded by paying for all of the infrastructure and profiting at some point. But this was not to continue forever: around '13 the application, which didn't encrypt credit card data and associated all posts made using the application to the individual's real names for an arbitrary period of time, experienced a breach. Because Hiroyuki had given control of the domains and servers over to Jim Watkins, who had up until that point just been his colo, to dodge legal obligations in Japan, Jim Watkins took over.
Hiroyuki had nothing to do with the administration or creation of the software that was breached. They're shady individuals: both are manipulative (they play dumb) when you try to interact with them on their respective forums. But not knowing the specific timeline or everything that happened in the business dispute, it's hard to say who's more at fault in the 2channel situation. It might also be important to note that the "legal obligations" that Hiroyuki was dodging in Japan are fines for libel, due to Japan not having an equivalent to the USA's Communications Decency Act ยง230. |