A Japanese court on Wednesday acquitted a man of illicitly operating computer software after he embedded a program in his website to mine cryptocurrency using the computers of site visitors.

The Yokohama District Court ruled that it would be "excessive" to punish the 31-year-old website designer, who was indicted for operating the Coinhive program without the knowledge or permission of people visiting his site, saying that the program could not be considered a computer virus.

His action "does not constitute a crime as we cannot say embedding the program was socially unacceptable," said Presiding Judge Toshihiro Homma in handing down the ruling.

Prosecutors sought a fine of 100,000 yen, claiming the man operated the program without obtaining the consent of site visitors who were unaware their computers were being used, increasing their electricity usage.

The defense called for his acquittal, arguing the program was not intended to cause damage to people's personal computers or leak private information.

The ruling did recognize the program had an impact on visitors but said it was minor.

Source: ANNnewsCH