Loki Technology
2channel was owned by whom from Oct 2017 to Oct 2018?
2channel , also known as 2ch , Channel 2 , and sometimes retrospectively as 2ch.net , was an anonymous Japanese textboard founded in 1999 by Hiroyuki Nishimura . As Japans most popular online community , with around ten million users accessing it each day , it had a level of influence in society described as comparable to that of traditional mass media such as television , radio , and magazines . In 2007 , the site had an annual revenue of around ; it was then the largest site of its kind in the world , receiving 2.5 million posts per day . 2channel and its successors are more controversial than other social media in Japan ; they are extremely popular among Japans extreme right-wing , known as the netto-uyoku , who post xenophobic comments , often targeting Koreans . Defamation is of particular concern ; by August 2008 , Nishimura had received more than one hundred lawsuits for defamatory comments left on the website . Announcements of crimes also have drawn scrutiny towards 2channel and its successors . In 2012 , 2channel was accused by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police of allowing its platform to be used by amphetamine dealers , although no charges were filed . The site was hosted and had its domain registration provided by Jim Watkins in San Francisco , California . In 2009 , the sites ownership was transferred to Packet Monster Inc. , but Nishimura remained in control until February 2014 , when Watkins seized its domain , 2ch.net . This domain seizure resulted in two textboards claiming to be the legitimate 2channel : , owned by Watkins through Philippine corporation Loki Technology Inc. , and 2ch.sc , owned by Nishimura through Packet Monster Inc . In September 2007 , 2channel averaged over 2.4 million posts per day . As of July 2020 , 5channel had 1,031 boards receiving around 2.7 million posts per day on weekends , with no growth since March 2016 . Meanwhile , 2ch.sc then had 826 boards receiving around 5,700 posts daily . History . Predecessors . Textboards like 2channel were rooted in two earlier technologies : dial-in bulletin boards , known in Japan as , and Usenet . 2channel has two direct predecessors : ( あやしいわーるど ) , created in 1996 by Shiba Masayuki , and Amezou ( ) , created in 1997 . Ayashii World was the first large anonymous web bulletin board in Japan , while Amezou originated the more familiar textboard concept wherein threads are displayed chronologically , with new comments bumping old threads to the top , rather than in a branching tree . Ayashii World closed in 1998 , leading most of its former users to go to Amezou ; Nishimura advertised 2channel in a post on Amezou in May 1999 , calling it Amezous second channel . From June , Amezou became increasingly unable to handle the load on its servers , until its host shut it down after threats against Amezous anonymous owner which contained his dox were posted on it . Early history . 2channel was founded on 30 May 1999 in a college apartment in Conway , Arkansas on the campus of University of Central Arkansas by Hiroyuki Nishimura . Success came quickly ; many of Amezous users began using it as soon as it opened . When compared with other bulletin boards , 2channels technology wasnt much different ; what led to its success was instead its being an outlet for unfettered expression ; by being hosted in the United States , 2channel was able to bypass more restrictive Japanese censorship rules , while still being accessible from Japan . The site also enjoyed greater immunity from legal action within Japan due to the location of its servers . By 2002 , Google said that the most searched word in Japan was 2channel . By 2004 , 2channel was already the largest internet forum in Japan . The name 2channel is a reference to VHF channel 2 , the default setting for the RF modulators used in earlier-generation game consoles ( such as Nintendos Family Computer ) when connecting to Japanese television sets . Where Amezou was originally meant to be channel one , 2channel was meant to be channel two . The sites iconic jar logo is a reference to deprecatory remarks some former users of Ayashii World would make about 2channel early on in the sites history , likening it to a spittoon ( ) . Nishimura took this nickname and adopted it as the sites logo by 2002 . Jim Watkins , an ex-US army non-commissioned officer ( sergeant first class ) , domain name registrar , and dedicated hosting service provider , hosted 2channel since at least 2004 through various corporate identities , including Big-server.com Inc. , Pacific Internet Exchange LLC and N . T . Technology Inc . Before 2channel , Watkins company primarily specialized in using servers and domains in the United States to serve uncensored pornographic content to users in Japan . Ownership transfer and government scrutiny . On 2 January 2009 , Nishimura claimed to have transferred ownership of 2channel to Packet Monster Inc. , a company based in Chinatown , Singapore , and to no longer be involved in the sites management . However , Nishimura was charged with violating Japanese narcotic control laws anyway on 20 December 2012 . As part of their case , the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department ( MPD ) claimed Nishimura remained involved in 2channels operations , alleging Packet Monster Inc . is a shell company ( ) . The main thrust of the complaint was that Nishimura allegedly did not delete posts seeking to purchase illicit amphetamine from other 2channel users online ; the , an agency of the MPD , alleged that in 2011 97% of its 5,223 deletion requests did not result in deletion . On 19 March 2013 , the Public Prosecutors Office decided not to prosecute the case . In August 2013 , the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau declared in a tax audit that Nishimura had failed to declare worth of website revenue which should have been taxed between 2009 and 2012 , years in which he financially benefited from Packet Monster Inc. ; Nishimura settled the matter by paying the owed tax , . Personal information leak . In August 2013 , a hacker using the name the personal details ( including names , addresses , and phone numbers ) and credit card numbers of thousands of 2channel users who had used 2channels paid services into the public domain , exposing the anonymous profiles of various high level personas such as politicians and writers , including an attorney involved in 2channel cases , Takahiro Karasawa ( ) , and a staff member of AKB48 . More than 74,000 users had their personal information exposed by the leak . The paid service involved in the leak was known as the 2channel viewer ( ) , or . Its main utility was that it allowed users to read old threads ; if a thread on 2channel received 1,000 posts , it would become part of the by a process of .dat omission ( ) of such threads , after which time a thread was no longer freely accessible . 2channel charged per year for the service , which was typically paid by credit card ; logs of these payments were the source of the data leak . At the time of the leak , Watkins apologized on behalf of N . T . Technology , Inc. , saying he was the victim of a cyber attack and that some data [ of my ] customers was compromised . Domain seizure and split . On 19 February 2014 , Jim Watkins , as chairman of N.T . Technology , Inc. , 2channels domain registrar , seized 2channels domain . He took full control over the website , relieved Nishimura of all power , and assumed the role of website administrator . Watkins made the kako rogu free to all users shortly after assuming control . Watkins claimed that Nishimura had failed to pay him money owed which led to the seizure as a way to cover Nishimuras debts , while Nishimura claimed that he had in fact paid everything owed and that the domain transfer was an illegal domain hijacking . In response , Nishimura created his own clone of 2channel at , scraping the contents of the entire 2channel website and updating 2ch.sc as new posts appeared on 2ch.net . In a Q&A session on 4chan shortly after becoming the sites owner , Nishimura claimed that 2channel was stolen by Watkins . Nishimura has attempted to repossess the domain both through WIPOs Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy and through the Japanese court system . Through the Japan Patent Office , Nishimura owns the trademark 2channel , though the WIPO refused to intervene on his behalf on account of that , suggesting the parties go to court instead as it was not , in its view , a case of cybersquatting but rather a business dispute . Ron Watkins , Jims son , in 2016 registered the trademark 5channel in Japan . On 1 October 2017 , 2ch.net began redirecting to 5ch.net , a domain owned by Loki Technology , Inc . The chairman of Loki Technology Inc . is also Jim Watkins ; his wife , Liziel , is the treasurer and majority shareholder . According to a press release , the name was changed to 5channel to avoid potential legal issues due to Nishimuras ownership of the 2channel trademark . Culture . Due to its large number of boards , the types of information exchanged on 2channel are very diverse . There are boards for topics as diverse as sports , sex , celebrity gossip , computer programming and ongoing earthquakes ; even some academic research has gotten its start on 2channel . Anonymous posting . One of the most distinctive features of 2channel is its use of anonymous posting . Nishimura explained his reasons for preferring anonymity online to USC Annenbergs Japan Media Review thus:If there is a user ID attached to a user , a discussion tends to become a criticizing game . On the other hand , under the anonymous system , even though your opinion/information is criticized , you dont know with whom to be upset . Also with a user ID , those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority , and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them . Under a perfectly anonymous system , you can say , its boring , if it is actually boring . All information is treated equally ; only an accurate argument will work.However , a frequent criticism directed toward anonymous textboards like 2channel , most notably by Kazuhiko Nishi , is that their anonymous nature make them mere toilet graffiti ( ) . 2channels anonymity is a departure from most English language internet forums which require some form of registration , usually coupled with email verification for further identification of an individual ; its anonymity in part inspired the creation of 4chan . On 2channel , a name field is available , but it is seldom used . However , as open proxies such as the Tor network are banned from posting on 2channel , the administrators have some degree of ability to help law enforcement unmask users if necessary . Revenue . While 2channel and its successors are commercial , 2channel was moderated by volunteers . 2channel relied on advertisements from obscure companies . In 2007 , it had an annual revenue of around . Between 2009 and 2012 , in ad profits were transferred to Nishimuras Singaporean shell company . As early as 2004 , companies such as Dentsu were data mining the website for their clients , keeping them informed of how they were being portrayed by 2channel users ; by 2006 , 75% of the content Dentsu analyzed on behalf of its customers was posted to 2channel . 2channel also received revenue from subscription services like the aforementioned maru . For its part , 5channel has a subscription service , , that allows people outside Japan to post on it ; this service also hides ads from its subscribers . Matome . 2channel historically allowed anyone to use its data , providing it in an easily parsable format ; this made it simple to create third party dedicated browsers ( ) for posting on and using 2channel . The openness of the data allowed for the proliferation of and , which summarize 2channel threads and attempt to collect what they see as the best of 2channel . In 2007 , due to growing discontentment towards such sites , Nishimura added a board , /poverty/ , which marked every post on it with the phrase . This caused many users to abandon other boards for that board . Watkins made it a priority to combat piracy of 5channel by third-party matome sites in March 2014 , adding tensai kinshi to many popular boards . Such sites siphon users from 2channel itself , with some receiving in excess of 100 million monthly pageviews ; in one case a matome site earned its owner per month . Watkins followed up the rule change by restricting access to 2channels data in March 2015 , by requiring that dedicated browser authors use a special API to access 2channels , and later 5channels , thread data . Phenomena . Densha Otoko . Densha Otoko is a Japanese franchise consisting of a movie , television series , manga , and other media , all based on the purportedly true story of a 23-year-old man who intervened when a drunk man started to harass several women on a train . The man ultimately begins dating one of the women . The event and the mans subsequent dates with the woman , chronicled on 2channel , directly inspired the franchise . Whether or not the original 2channel story is actually true is debated . Shift_JIS art . 2channel and its successors , being textboards , cannot have images posted to them . Users get around this , however , by posting a more expressive form of ASCII art : Shift_JIS art . Below is a small sample : Controversies . Slander and legal issues . During Hiroyukis administration , he was often openly defiant of Japanese law , especially around libel , and his duty to follow it , telling Yomiuri Shimbun in March 2007 : By May 2008 , Nishimura had lost more than fifty libel lawsuits in Japanese civil courts , and had been assessed millions of dollars in penalties ; by August , according to him , hed received more than one hundred lawsuits . While according to the official pages of the website , slander was prohibited , activists such as Debito Arudou claimed that the site did not actually respond to requests to delete posts in his case , returning mail unopened . After the transfer to Packet Monster Inc. , Arudou , who had still not received any of the court ordered penalty , wrote in an op-ed that Nishimura had only transferred his assets to increase his unaccountability . While Nishimura at that point had never paid any of the compensation courts ordered in his cases , in 2010 one of his plaintiffs was successful in getting compensated through the publisher of one of Nishimuras books . Crime announcements . Crime announcements ( ) were a regular occurrence on 2channel , including of mass suicides and murders . After the 2000 Neomugicha incident , in which a bus was hijacked by a man who posted on 2channel , police officers started regularly policing 2channel ; such surveillance only increased after the Akihabara massacrer announced his 2008 attack on 2channel as well . Former superintendent of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Tateshi Higuchi called the site a den of iniquity . According to The Japan Times , however , 2channel cooperated with police in the past to aid them in catching criminals using 2channel by giving police their IP addresses , from which their locations were determined . Such crime announcements have continued to be a problem on 5channel : it was speculated that the man who carried out the Kyoto Animation arson attack posted an advance warning of the crime on 5channel . Nationalism and hate speech . 2channel , with its massive size and anonymous posting , is abundant with slander , hate speech and defamation against public figures , institutions , and minority ethnic groups . Far-right users of 2channel are referred to as netto-uyoku , a term roughly analogous to alt-right . Though the site has rules against posts illegal under Japanese law , the scale and anonymous nature of the site makes prompt deletions difficult to realize in practice . Furthermore , on occasion , 2channel has been accused of being reluctant to remove defamatory posts . The discussion boards are also often used to coordinate real-life demonstrations ; as an example , 2channel users organized an August 2011 rally against Fuji Television , their complaint being that the channel was broadcasting too many Korean television shows . Sankei Shimbun reported in 2018 that 5channel , which received most of 2channels users , has the same reputation for attracting netto-uyoku . 2channel netto-uyoku frequently make racist comments against Koreans . In 2009 , it was even discovered that an Asahi Shimbun employee had posted racist remarks towards Koreans on 2channel . After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , fake news proliferated on 2channel , falsely accusing Chinese and Korean people of plundering evacuation centers . Technology . 2channel operated on forum software that was considered innovative at the time of its founding , originally written by Hiroyuki himself , but later replaced through the collective effort of his Unix-savvy users ; the software is known as . It was a major departure from Usenet ; however , when compared to other Japanese textboards at the time , such as Amezou , 2channels format was not much different . Boards in the textboard software have their threads sorted by the time of their last post , so making a post would bump ( , age ) the thread to the top of the board index . However , when posting in a thread , users may use a function known as to avoid bumping a thread in this way . Often , posters will use sage on purpose , to avoid unwanted attention . Major outages . 2010–2011 Korean DDoS . In response to racism towards Koreans by 2channel users , especially against Yuna Kim , an athlete who defeated Japan in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics , the site suffered an extended outage in March 2010 due to a distributed denial of service ( DDoS ) attack conducted by a Korean hacking group . The attack against Jim Watkins Pacific Internet Exchange LLC affected other sites on the shared network as well , including some belonging to US government agencies ; it is estimated to have cost . Watkins requested the American government investigate the event as an instance of cyberterrorism ; according to him , sporadic DDoS attacks by Koreans continued into 2011 . 2015 8chan DDoS . Beginning on 8 January 2015 , 8chan , also owned by Jim Watkins and hosted on the network of N . T . Technology , Inc. , suffered an outage due to a DDoS attack . Due to the attack , 2ch.net , then owned by Watkins but not yet operated under the name 5channel , went down as well . The attacks against the messageboards lasted until at least 13 January , leading many 2channel users to become angry with the management . Societal impact . In September 2007 , 2channel averaged over 2.4 million posts per day . As of July 2020 , 5channel had 1,031 boards receiving around 2.7 million posts per day on weekends , with no growth since March 2016 . Meanwhile , 2ch.sc then had 826 boards receiving around 5,700 posts daily . Due to its popularity , 2channel and its successors have had considerable influence on Japanese society . Childrens use of 2channel . Use of sites like 2channel by minors is a major concern in Japan . Some childrens search sites , such as , filtered textboards like 2channel . In Tokyo , a local ordinance requires that internet service providers develop filters to prevent minors from accessing sites which could harm the sound and wholesome fostering [ of their youth ] ; they must also confirm before installing a connection if any minors live in the household . Despite this , however , web filter provider Net Star in February 2007 released the results of a survey which showed that the utilization rate of 2channel for primary and secondary students was 12.2% . In response to threads on 2channel about certain schools which were leading to cyberbullying , the Ministry of Education in 2008 released a 65-page manual for teachers and parents on how to handle the issue . Concerned about the popularity of 2channel among children and teenagers , a team of childhood education professors at the University of the Ryukyus in 2009 published a paper making recommendations to lawmakers on how to curb such use . In February 2020 , Nishimura himself wrote an op-ed in Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun warning parents about the dangers of allowing their children unfettered access to social media sites like YouTube and 2channel . Politicians and 2channel . Naoto Kan , a future Prime Minister who was then a member of the National Diet , sent a legal notice on 10 May 2000 demanding that 2channel delete a post by someone falsely claiming to be him . After the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election in 2007 , Prime Minister Tarō Asō stated in a Fuji TV interview that he sometimes posts on 2channel . During each election season , supporting posts for perennial candidates Matayoshi Jesus and Mac Akasaka were frequently made on 2channel , turning them into something of a meme , similar to the repeated candidacies of Vermin Supreme in the United States . After more than ten failed candidacies for various political offices , including Governor of Tokyo , Akasaka was eventually elected to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly , representing Minato , in April 2019 . Asahi Shimbun credited Akasakas online fame with helping him win the surprise victory . 2channel in the media . Japanese news organizations often relied on 2channel to determine the issues the public was thinking about , and for leads . However , the mass media reports on it negatively , similar to how it reports on otaku culture in general . The phrase the online bulletin board says ( ) , when used in reporting , may refer either to 2channel or to other forums . Movements spawned on 2channel often receive media attention , noting how the methods of 2channel activists break socially normative behavior and bring pressure to bear through sheer numbers . Beyond this , though , 2channel posts were often a basis for media reports in Japan . TV programs have even featured 2channels moderators and users ; comedian Hikari Ōta , for example , criticized Nishimura during a discussion on the Tokyo Broadcasting Systems Sandējapon on the ideal limits of free expression as applied to social networks . Shokun ! magazine , during its operation , ran a column known as which shared patriotic 2channel posts . Weekly Bunshun ( , published by Bungeishunjū ) , meanwhile , has been criticized for being seen as overly pro-2channel and relying on its posts too much in its reporting .