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A JAPANESE virus writer has been charged with copyright theft because Inspector Knacker of the Kyoto Yard found there was a grave shortage of hacking laws.

Masato Nakatsuji, 24, a graduate student at Osaka Electro-Communication University is believed to have embedded a computer virus behind a Japanese animation film called "Clannad".

Apparently he arranged it so that when a woman walked amid falling cherry blossoms the victim downloaded the "Harada virus". There are grave perils involved with cherry blossoms. They tend to make you write haikus.

However Kyoto coppers could not find anything in the law books they could charge him with, other than nicking and distributing the Clannad flick. The police thought about damage to property and obstructing business, but the only charge that might have legs in court was the copyright theft.

According to AP, if he had made his own movie, there was not a thing that the Japanese could do to stop him.

Although the country has been trashed by viruses, politicians have been slower to move than a dead slug on writing an anti-hacking law.

It is not clear how much damage Nakatsuji did. The film was distributed through an illegal Japanese file-sharing software program called Winny so victims have been a bit reticent about coming forward.

Still although he might not be done for hacking, it is not as if Nakatsujii will get off lightly. Japan has been listening to the movie industy and has some pretty tough copyright laws. He could be locked up for ten years and be fined about US $93,000.