AfterDawn: News

Japanese protest YouTube for illegal content

A letter recently was sent to CEO Chad Hurley or YouTube by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC), in protest of their continued failure to proactively remove copyrighted materials from their website. JASRAC's main complaint in the matter was that YouTube has no policy in place to monitor content put onto the site by users and will not remove said copyrighted material until there is a formal complaint or threat of lawsuit issued to them.

One snippet from the offical letter sent by JASRAC and 22 other Japanese companies stated, "Taking into account the current status of your service, we believe that your company should not just wait for rights owners to take the 'Notice and Take down' procedures but should bear the responsibility to prevent, in advance, copyright infringements such as illegal uploads and distributions, or to avoid those infringements".



This new protest comes just a month and a half after YouTube was forced to remove some 29,549 files that infringed on the copyrights of 23 Japanese media companies. Neither this complaint or YouTubes removal of the files stopped users from consistantly uploading copyrighted material to the website for public consumption.

The letter went on to say "We are seriously concerned about the current situation where the Notice and Takedown scheme, aimed [at preventing] copyright infringements, is not functioning well due to the large amount of illegal uploads. While we expect you to promptly take adequate and necessary measures to prevent copyright infringement on the YouTube Web site, until you do so, we request you to take provisional measures ... in order to prevent illegal uploads of audio-visual works, which copyrights are neither owned by the persons posting the works on the Web site themselves nor licensed by the right owners".

One of the recommended actions suggested by JASRAC was to post a message on the YouTube website in Japanese stating that posting copyrighted materials may be illegal and can result in civil and criminal actions. No word from YouTube yet as far as a response.

Source:
InfoWorld

Written by: Dave Horvath @ 5 Dec 2006 10:00

• Previous article

• Xbox Live and iPod traffic surge this season

• Next article

• Sony releases firmware update 1.3 for PS3

• 15 comments

• TheJoxter

  I'll miss all those idiotic Japanese Gameshows.
  
  Be forwarned rigorous enforcement of copyright law kills cultural exchange...

  5.12.2006 10:34 #1

• georgeluv

  just yestersay i was thumbing threw yotubes new video and new chanel lists and was thinking how long it would be till all those anime producers in japan sent a nasty letter to youtube, cause id say about 30% of videos on youtube are that gad damned anime!
  
  i also figured the copywrited content on the "most watched videos" page was like 60-70% and ill bet most of it wasnt put up with concent. google is basicaly siding with pirates simply by owning this pandoras box of legal offences and litigation vulnerabilities.

  5.12.2006 11:00 #2

• Fiji5555

  These corporations are way too anal when it comes to Youtube postings. The need a clue and here it is.....HEY YOU TWITS IT'S FREE ADVERTISING!

  5.12.2006 12:20 #3

• ZippyDSM

  Corporate logic
  sale more by doing less with the product, earn more by making the product 4 times the actual cost.
  
  IE
  Sale less = more money

  5.12.2006 12:29 #4

• limelight

  Its free advertising for them, its not like we can just turn on our tv's in the USA and get all the japanese channels. Give us a break for crying out loud!!

  5.12.2006 13:31 #5

• ZippyDSM

  the Anime crowd is slow to get to it but they are gettign their,US dubbers blame Fan subers for all thier woes but hell japanaase dvds are marked up almost 50% have less on them the US side could lower their prices are 15-35 a pop most shows are 12-25 eps and some are 50-250 they also do not "translate" they Americanize dubs are off 70% of the time and the subs are plain and they tend to skip songs theres a reason why the fan subs are better
  
  They don't Americanize they the try and tell you bits of japanase lore and info sure their translations are not perfect but holly hell they put more effort and heart into it than US dubbers to...they really should sell the subs by themselfs for 9.99 a dvd......
  
  
  
  I geek therefor I am..........

  5.12.2006 13:48 #6

• CiDaemon

  Are they legally required to monitor and actively police their content? I think that it would be next to impossible for YT to do what the asians are asking them; if more copyrighted material is getting uploaded every day by millions of people, how is the ~25-person staff of YT supposed to keep up? I think they should have no legal liability whatsoever for what people put on their site; they only offer the service, other people are the ones who abuse it by uploading copyrighted content. I'm sure they try as best they can to appease the copyright gods, but they can only do so much; if the asians want their content policed, they should be doing the policing! This is the current scheme in use on the site: when a copyright owner sees their content on YT, they report it and it is removed. If these asians were smart enough, they would have people searching the site for specific content, not issuing a blanket ban that would be impossible to enforce.

  5.12.2006 15:34 #7

• ZippyDSM

  CiDaemon
  Well no worse than the rest of the media mafia,in all they want to get money from YT to advertise their stuff or not to even speak of it,YT is screwed they will never make enough money to pay off them all thus will degrade in time,the less rules and free things are the more people like it and the more corperations hate it.
  

  5.12.2006 16:05 #8

• kyo28

  The way I see it, JASRAC are in their right since Youtube's policy states that it is forbidden to upload videos for which a user doesn't have the rights. I think this reaction from JASRAC is due to the fact that massive amounts of Japanese TV encodes, DVD rips and music video clips have been uploaded to Youtube recently. As such I find their request perfectly understandable and legitimate.
  Besides, the quality on Youtube is very low so visitors won't have much to lose anyway. I never go to Youtube to watch current Japanese TV shows anyway (^_^)
  
  What is more alarming is the fact that JASRAC and other anti-piracy organizations in Japan will start monitoring transfers from Japanese P2P programs more closely, meaning that they might try to shut down the networks all together. This is mainly due to their concerns that music is shared through those P2P's, but TV encodes from currently running shows might get caught in the crossfire. Mind you that fans of Japanese shows get their files from those P2P's and are afterwards shared on Bittorrent, Youtube or fansubbed. Shutting down those P2P's would be a lot worse than them attacking Youtube, since Youtube is only a low-quality extension so to speak of the high quality encodes on Japanese P2P.
  
  To make matters worse, aside from NHK news broadcasts most of these TV stations are not available, even with satelite in foreign countries. I would gladly pay for a subscription for broadband or satelite Japanese TV ... if only it were available. As such, my only alternative is Japanese P2P but if that gets shut down, we'll be effectively cut off from Japanese TV alltogether.

  6.12.2006 00:52 #9

• Bladework

  @georeluv
  i agree theres a lot of anime there!! but i dont dislike it though....
  
  @zippy
  i agree again, US dubs honest suck so much....the voice acting is so crappy a good anime becomes a bad one, althou i wont say all of them but most of them...
  although most anime on youtube are fansubs and a lot of them arent license here in US so the only problem will be the licensed ones

  7.12.2006 08:02 #10

• Mr-Movies

  Although I'm sure JASRAC has legitimate complaints this statement is incorrect or at least in the old days use to be.
  
  QUOTE:
  JASRAC's main complaint in the matter was that YouTube has no policy in place to monitor content put onto the site by users and will not remove said copyrighted material until there is a formal complaint or threat of lawsuit issued to them.
  
  It should take a formal complaint to remove something, I know businesses don't want to hear that as they would like it as easy as possible to control others but there are very good reasons to require a formal complaint!
  
  Just a side point...

  7.12.2006 08:31 #11

• ZippyDSM

  Bladework
  aint it so if its not stolen in the night and made into TV anime its done in the light like Naruto why are we and because of the quick dubing it hurts...
  
  but even NON TV anime is genrealy a 50-70%
  BLeach is around 70% they tried to do it right but.....

  7.12.2006 11:20 #12

• xhardc0re

  DAMN JAPS and their Hentai. Pfft...and anime. Anyone who watches anime is a pervert.
  
  Baka JASRAC!

  12.1.2007 22:09 #13

• ZippyDSM

  xhardc0re
  0_o
  Not all anime is hentai and not all hentai is bad(only 90% of hentai is bad).
  
  Over the top violent anime is painful,anime like EVA is painful >>
  
  Give me story and character over pointless violence and shock value any day.

  12.1.2007 22:17 #14

• Loftyz (unverified)

  Technology has evolved beyond the reach of Japanese and US corporations.
  
  The world has become interconnected, and it is become impossible for companies to claim ownership of intellectual property (such as Anime TV series), and with good cause.
  
  The consumers pay for and view these shows, and the companies are payed by us through TV subscriptions and on-the-side sales (such as Yu-Gi-Oh Trading cards and multiple video games).
  
  How can they claim ownership of something, if we are paying their paychecks?

  27.7.2010 23:06 #15