YouTube Removed 30,000 Japanese Videos from Site 265
Grooves writes "YouTube has been asked to remove almost 30,000 videos from their site, according to reports. The Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) found 29,549 videos on the site that had materials contained in them that where not authorized by rights holders. From the article, 'A spokesperson for that organization said that they were considering petitioning YouTube for a better screening process. Although YouTube is legally obligated to remove infringing material when notified, some copyright holders have expressed irritation at the notion that they need to police YouTube themselves.' Now that Google's is attached to the site, will events like this become more commonplace?"
Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
It's a conspiracy!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Saving space (Score:4, Funny)
That's unfortunate.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's unfortunate.... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Laughing at the weird customs of foreigners brings us together as a human family.
Re:That's unfortunate.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's unfortunate.... (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlAkOhH9eek [youtube.com]
Japanese game show - the goal: To make it through a tongue twister without screwing up. The penalty: A swift wack to the groin with the slap-o-matic 2000.
Seriously.. Comedy gold.
As tweak would say, that's too much pressure (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe Gamespot's Button Mashing needs a Japanese overhaul. I'd like to see someone beat two enemies from TMNT2 when their groin is on the line.
A Favorite Moment Of Japanese TV (Score:5, Interesting)
They are geniuses. American TV could learn something from them.
Re:That's unfortunate.... (Score:4, Interesting)
What I miss is the magician. In the USA, the bigger and flashier the better. In Japan the smaller close-up but seemingly impossible magic is what I found interesting. Anyone else amazed at the glass trick where a salt shaker is passed up through a glass top table? How about tossing a playing card inside a fishtank, then reaching through the tank back glass to fetch the card? Another street magic trick is the one where he tapes a piece of paper onto a shop front window, then goes inside the shop, then comes out by tearing a hole through the paper and climbing through, then removing the paper showing an intact glass window. Wow. That leaves a lot of the US flashy magic tricks looking pretty pale.
I'm going to miss the magic shows.
By the way, anybody know how he did that?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know I can't get enough of watching some guy try to escape a lit bottle-rocket sticking out of his ass...
Re:That's unfortunate.... (Score:4, Funny)
Lets hope their purchase wasnt a mistake and we keep getting cool videos out of it.
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Maybe that's why they want them removed. Could it be a secret plot by the Japanese to export only anime, but keep all the really good live action Japanese cultural related shows to themselves? It could also be that the Japanese don't mind acting fools infront of other Japanese, but by damned if they'll act a fool where non-Japanese will see it.
Re:That's unfortunate.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that the so-called intellectual property 'owners' don't understand is that the only thing worse than having someone view your video without paying is to have no one interested in viewing your video at all. And every step that they take to close off access to public viewing of their video products sends the public into other directions for interesting videos. Directions that are not under the control of the video or music industries and directions that are unable to generate profits for the video and music industries.
That is the whole point of the YouTube phenomenon. Young people are very interested in seeing videos that are outside of the control of the global media giants. And interested in not paying money for the experience. Any normal person could figure this out, but media executives and lawyers are not normal people. Their brains work differently.
In other words, the media industry needs to learn that removing your products from the new general media outlets seriously decreases long-term demand for your products. And a serious decrease in demand means for them a serious decrease in the advertising revenue stream.
One would think that they would have learned this lesson from the demise of network television over the past twenty years. But again, their brains just don't work like ordinary brains do.
The global media companies will be gone in twenty years, Good riddance!
Nothing to see here. (Score:5, Funny)
Who didn't see this coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
no, even google saw it coming. (Score:5, Insightful)
After about 30 seconds of brainstorming, I can imagine google will focus on the social networking users (I already see YouTube making huge headway against MySpace-- watching a video of someone on their profile gives LOADS more parsable clues about them than a few blurry "MySpace Angles" photos), and secondarily attempt to convince many copyright holders to PROMOTE their retail content on YouTube rather than just ask them to cease and desist. This promotion could come in the way of YouTube "premier access" videos or site area, driven by g-checkout (or whatever its name is), where users pay for individual access to videos (at $.05 a view for a 2 minute video? maybe..) or perhaps for a site-wide access on a monthly fee basis. Or this promotion could come in the way of simply trying to pursuade copyright holders to let heir heavily compressed 320x240 webvideo stay up, with blatant text links/banners to the official site or whatever. As someone who actually creates commercial video content (I make documentaries, but have directed other projects such as music videos, etc), this is a situation I am amenable to. I'd be fine with google showing excepts of my last couple of films (extreme sports stuff), with context links on the page to buy the DVD, or maybe to "jamster" type ringtone sites that sell my video ringtones (which I don't actually have, but funny story, a large distributor [rhymes with Barner Wrothers] approached us to distribute our latest film, and one of their executive's biggest sales pitches to us [this was around a yr ago] was doing video ringtones-- "they're going to be huge!"). Also, remember, even if YouTube can't turn a profit on its own, the data-mining possibilities are endess... let's say I use my YouTube account (i am logged in via cookie) to watch lots of Morrissey videos. Then I google search for "documentary." There is [hypothetically] a new documentary coming out about Morrissey's legal battles with former Smiths bandmates, and now google can serve me context ad content based on the context of not just what I searched for, but what google also know me to enjoy. The correlations that can be made by cross referencing this content are pretty friggin extensive. I am positive this hasn't escaped their attention.
So in short, yes, everyone (including the big G) saw this coming. Expect some cool adaptations soon, I do hope.
Sidenote: I think that there is probably an amazing documentary to be made about the goings-on inside google.. what it means to work on the campus, how google employees are treated differently than typical IT employees, how they foster innovation, how they continue to push the envelope of how to do business on the web, their expansion into china (and grappling wi
Somewhere in the google legal dept. (Score:2)
That is very insightful (Score:4, Funny)
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I hope and suspect that Google is already in talks with the major media conglomerates in order to work out a deal with them. I imagine something along the lines of "Don't sue us or make us take down copyrighted stuff and we'll link those copyrighted pages so users can easily purchase the originals from you." It's pretty smart, actually. A lot of the copyrighted stuff on YouTube people watch only because it is free -- and easy to pick and
Noooooo!!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Noooooo!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
*cue the "memory lane" ripple dissolve effect with harp strumming*
I remember back when fansubs were scratchy Nth-generation videotapes, converted from Japanese videotapes or recordings from television, with subs added via the chunky digital fonts that ancient camcorders used to caption 1980s wedding videos with. Fan groups in colleges and stuff swapped them quietly amongst themselves. It was usually good enough for viewing the story, but only just, and buying the official release would be a huge leap forward quality-wise. Fansubs weren't competing with the official releases then, you still had a reason to buy the real thing. Nowadays, they're often pretty indistinguishable from a file ripped from a brand new DVD, you can download a copy with the a/v quality just as perfect as the original digital Japanese DVD or TV signal.
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Admitedly, 2 of the most popular shows (atm) are Licensed and airing in the US, however Dattebayo is still subing them.
But what else do you expect from the GNAA?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Noooooo!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
So... they were ok with it since they had no plans to sell the shows here
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Informative)
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Maybe. I would think that there's would be a lot more incentive for people to upload original and creative stuff (look at how Flash has democratized simple games and animation). Instead because of lax filtering of all this copyrighted materials there's much more of a demand of AMV and Will and Grace episodes. People with original stuff dont even get noticed outside of th
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, yeah... (Score:2)
Today they have the following options:
1. Gootube lays the burden of checking copyright in the uploaders, remove upon request from the holders.
2. Gootube lays the burden of checking copyright in the holders (eg, automagically via fingerprinting), considers anything else fair game.
The *AAs want Gootube to check (via fingerprint), check again (when asked to), and assume responsibility if something (that the *AAs provided) goes wrong.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
AFAIK, YouTube's only legal obligation is to remove copyrighted materials when notified. Copyright was was written with the notiont that "it's your copyright, you protect it."
"If they claim to pre-screen any content they may become liable for all content that gets through."
I switched "any" and "all".
Isn't that how the system works?
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Google, of course, will claim it's all just bits and that they remove stuff when notified, but if the lawyers can convince the courts that they should have known better
Law's on their side. (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as they respond to takedown requests and have an address on file with the Copyright Office for those requests, then I think they're pretty safe in doing what they're doing.
Everybody here on Slashdot has been predicting the death of Google by way of YouTube lawsuit
Why is it YouTube's job (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tonight @ 11: My bank stops sending me paper statements upon my request! SHOCKING!
No wonder why I couldn't find any Polysics videos! (Score:3, Funny)
...and so it begins (Score:4, Insightful)
Suddenly YouTube is worth a bundle of cash. We all knew it would happen.
All in all, I'd say this is a very gentle way of saying to the **AA that we're going to try to do the right thing.
On second thoughts, they already would have said that in private discussions, behind closed doors.
This is the way to prepare the rest of us. Then it won't seem so bad when they come down like a ton of bricks on the US infringements. It won't hurt their market so much.
police (Score:5, Insightful)
And exactly whose job should that be?
Re:police (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditionally, the government's executive branch is responsible for catching law-breakers, and the judiciary for dealing with them.
On the flip side, copyright infringement is traditionally a civil matter. Recent legislation in some jurisdictions has changed this. Perhaps this fairly recognises that the speed any damage is done today will be vastly faster than the speed of any protracted civil court proceedings, or perhaps it's because of lobbying from Big Media who want to reduce their overheads; take your pick.
I'm not completely decided on this one, but you can certainly understand content providers feeling that the government should act against organisations who, let's be fair, basically run a business model predicated on ripping off those content providers in violation of the law.
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Get Over It. (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the print world, or the spoken world, where... They need to find and notify the authorities of copyright infringement.
I understand the feeling that 'I shouldn't need to do this' that brings up that statement. But it has always been the copyright holder's problem to identify infractions. YouTube is no different in that regard, besides that it brings a lot of creations together in one place.
Re:Get Over It. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only people who absolutely know that a video contains copyrighted materials are the copyright owners and in this case they have made the identification, YouTube have removed the content and the world is as it should be.
The company involved can complain as much as they like that their copyrighted material should not be distributed in this manner but there is simply no sensible way in which the system can work other than the way it does. Perhaps if you could "fingerprint" every millisecond of video with a unique identifier which could be checked against a copyright database then that would change but I don't think there is any such system in place today.
Re:Get Over It. (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, you're saying there's no way to do this in its current form without flouting the law? Perhaps they should have thought of that before spending zillions on the idea?
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Not to mention if the copyright owners have or have not released their works to public domain.
No different? (Score:2)
Can you really not see any practical difference between the print world, where each separate infringement by an individual typically requires a significant time and materials overhead, and the on-line world, where mass infringement by thousands of individuals using sites like YouTube is near-free and near-instantaneous? Do you really believe that these have the same potential for damaging an injured party, and at the same speed, and thus merit the same response to uphold the spirit of the law?
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Regardless, if no one were to press charges, you can violate any law on the books without penalty. Only once charges are filed can the court start to prosecute you.
what copyright provides (Score:5, Insightful)
The power of copyright does not include forcing an obligation onto governments or common carriers to search or police the content. The power of copyright gives the owner a right to take down specific infringing works.
Every scribble, photo, sculpted shape or soundbite you create is copyrighted as soon as you create it. This goes for everybody within the copyright-abiding hemisphere, which obviously means that the number of copyrighted works outnumbers the population by a very large factor. Clearly, not all rights-holders are trying to enforce those rights against every transgression, thankfully. Grouse all you want, but if you own a copyright, you are the only party who should be obligated to do anything about it.
Some carriers might impose a licensing check before submissions can be completed, or they might impose occasional purges like this even without the copyright owners having to complain, but the vast majority of carriers do not (and should not) impose any such hurdle to allowing their users to publish. This is the central promise of public broadcasting and collaboration by network.
If every sheet of paper needed permission before it could hold an idea in ink, we would still be scratching words in the dirt and looking over our shoulders.
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Copyright does not, never had, nor ever will, protect ideas. It protects the expression of ieas in a fixed medium. perdiod, full stop, end of story. Ideas cannot be locked up with copyrights, that would be the world of patents, two doors down on the left.
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Well said. If a technology is implemented that by default prohibits the use of all copyrighted works until permission can be secured, with remote (and possibly retroactive) revocation, I think the movie studios and record companies are going to be in for a very, very rude awakening (as well as most of the business world). Business "steals" (sic) copyrighted material all the time. It's a very normal thing to do. But if they want to clamp down on our taking, I think we should clamp down on their taking as wel
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YouTube is very likely to be judged guilty of vicarious infringement if they do not find a way to keep copyrighted material from appearing in the first place.
and such a solution would be messy and/or complex and/or expensive (at least 2 of those) in order to have a reasonably low error rate, assuming that it is even possible.
Yatta? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can do without all the JPop though...
automated dupe removal (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the low-pass signature identification algorithms we have discussed lately, I would really like to see a duplicate-video cull on these sites. There seems to be fifty copies of each of the more popular clips, cloned and re-posted to video.google and youtube in some kind of karma-whoring frenzy.
I bet there are more than 30,000 dupes if you just count the 3,000 top-rated video clips.
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Rapid Share was doing that a while ago, to prevent the re-uploading of banned material.
Causing bad image? (Score:5, Funny)
So Japanese took the first step to correcting (hiding?) this public image of them.
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Lunatics? Who's the lunatic here? It sounds to me like the japanese are on eternal spring break and knows how to have a really good time!!
They looked... (Score:3, Insightful)
Only reason why this has happened (Score:2)
Slipped a nice little joke in there for everyone to enjoy too.
Those Poor Copyright Holders (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright holder != international megacorp (Score:2, Troll)
And would you apply the same standards to the countless small, specialist outfits, which produce much of the best video material out there, yet which are threatened with quite literally going under because of sites like this ripping their stuff? This type of organisation couldn't afford a lobbyist in their wildest dreams, never mind having anything to do with getting copyright law changed.
It's really very annoying when people equate "copyright law" with "abuse of power by multinational corporations". The
Re:Copyright holder != international megacorp (Score:4, Insightful)
The "small, specialist outfits" are precisely the ones who could benefit most from the huge, free exposure that a YouTube provides - they should be embracing this opportunity. Instead, however, they band together (as the JASRAC group in the TFA) and use the same jackboot tactics as their big corporate brethren.
The draconion copyright statutes instituted by the megacorps certainly aren't there to help the little guys - they're there to maintain the status quo. The small outfits should be clamoring for new advertising and distribution channels like YouTube and P2P, but they're not. In their silence they are complicit with the RIAA and MPAA thugs.
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I'm sorry, but your logic escapes me. How does having your entire video/DVD catalogue available on someone else's web site help anyone except that someone else? This isn't promotion, or marketing. I've seen both sides of this in some cases, and posted about it before. The short version is: loads of people just look it up on-line an
I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Best part is that this process can be easily automated so videos marked as copyrighted by MPIA or similar can be automatically 'copyright marked'. That would create a lot of revenue for artists and a lot of fun for ordinary people.
Shame that they cannot think in this way. Create - not destroy!
Cross-Pollination (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cross-Pollination (Score:4, Insightful)
How many videos are on YouTube? (Score:2, Interesting)
Non-dubbed anime. (Score:3)
The voice actors for most dubbed anime aren't very good and you lose a lot of information.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you also assuming that the professional subtitle scripts are 100% accurate to the original Japanese meaning?
Furthermore, are you assuming that those subbed anime files on YouTube were translated and subbed by professional translators?
Remember, with animation, the "original" voice track is also a dub track. Just as there are...less-than-talented American voice actors, so there are less-than-skillful Japanese v
This is EXACTLY how copyright law works (Score:3, Insightful)
Your Job sucks? (Score:3, Funny)
I work for The Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. I brows YouTube all day looking for pron, i mean illegal japanese material that does not belong on YouTube...
Just imagine their annual review...
"Good Job Li, you found 3,000 illegal videos on YouTube. Too bad Jin found 5,000 illegal videos. 15 lashings and you need to work more than your normal 60 hours a week!"
Reasonable. (Score:3, Insightful)
But then my friend made a very good point. Youtube was sold for $1.6 billion in no small part because they attracted viewers with copyrighted programming. They certainly have made little effort in the past to block that kind of material.
That friend has been in a similar situation where someone running a site overseas goes and essentially takes his copyrighted flash games and puts them on their site without his permission. They then lure visitors using my friend's, and other people's, creations in order to make money on advertising.
Why Youtube was ever worth $1.6 billion is beyond me.
YouTube Useless now (Score:2)
That explains a few things. (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of the bans sort of made sense, as there are some decidedly uncommercial bands on major labels in Japan (sort of a "whoops, totally forgot" situation). Also, there was a major crackdown by Japanese music TV channel Spaceshower TV, which a good many of the videos were recorded off of. Some banned videos, however, puzzled us.
For example, my offending videos included hand-held recordings of a long-defunct indie band Naht that were taken at the Black Cat club in Washington DC. Naht was one of my favorite bands in college, so I was overjoyed that I was able to find such rare footage and immediately wanted to share it. I'm dissapointed it was removed from youtube.
I was eventually given a permanent ban, although I hadn't uploaded anything in months. Bad timing, too, because I had switched the group back to "group leader approves videos" because of horrible video spam. It's too bad, too; a great Israeli noise group called Gaop started uploading videos. Not Japanese, but good stuff, so I kept it on.
I respect and understand my ban, but I'm still dissapointed. Maybe I should start digging around for stuff on the Chinese punk scene, see how youtube censors those.
Rights holders? (Score:5, Interesting)
They have to DMCA request, which means... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course. YouTube is the next Napster (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course this happened. YouTube is the next Napster. Same centralized hosting of uploaded content, same business model, same excuses, same legal problems. YouTube is in a worse legal position than Napster. Napster just hosted the index. YouTube hosts the actual content.
YouTube could well be shut down by an injunction. That's what happened to Napster. "Napster is enjoined from copying or assisting or enabling or contributing to the copy or duplication of all copyrighted songs and musical compositions of which the plaintiffs hold rights." -- U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.
As for it being the responsibility of the copyright holder to find the material, "Napster wrote the software; it's up to them to write software that will remove from users the ability to copy copyrighted material," -- Judge Patel
YouTube, like Napster, is a contributory infringer. "The district court determined that plaintiffs had demonstrated they would likely succeed in establishing that Napster has a direct financial interest in the infringing activity. We agree. Financial benefit exists where the availability of infringing material "acts as a 'draw' for customers." -- 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
I was amazed that Google bought YouTube. It was obvious they were buying into a huge litigation problem.
YouTube vs. Napster (Score:3, Interesting)
Many homemade videos get tons of hits/high ratings such as Ask a Ninja [youtube.com] - hilarious guy. Furthermore there are the 'video-bloggish' entries, i.e. documentaries that wouldn't be
YouTube hates da Bears (Score:2, Informative)
I mean, yeah, it probably was copyrighted and all, but they were, "not doing this because [they were] greedy." "The Bears are doin' it to feed the needy."
But wait, for some reason, it's still on Google Video [google.com],. . .
Pythagoras Switch remains (Score:3, Informative)
Now they artists have it worse (Score:2)
Pointless endeavor... (Score:3)
bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
They took down political comentary, and criticism of the Jap Govt, not "copyrighted" material.
Andy Out!
American media corps don't want you watching YouT (Score:4, Insightful)
...ube at all. No doubt they had a hand in reporting the programs and surely will not stop there. They would like to see all foreign programs barred for whatever reason simply because an eyeball glued to YouTube is NOT an eyeball glued to the major networks. If they could ban the home videos on YouTube they'd like to see that done too.
They perhaps are beginning to realize that the drop in their revenue is not so much because of media piracy, but because there's just so darn much competition that's been enabled by the internet and they're getting beat up. And unfortunately, it's not like there's just one upstart that they can buy-out and assimilate, there's millions of individual, independent content sources out there that's diluting their monopoly. Boo-hoo about that, but watch out because they've got their claws out, and I expect there are some underhanded moves in store up ahead...
The youth market is no doubt severely affected-- the draw of internet media or video games is dragging the eyeballs away from the dinosaur networks in droves and they're pretty darn scared about it-- or if they aren't, they ought to be. They certainly deserve to be...
Re:Google is goin' down (Score:4, Insightful)
In what bizarro universe did this happen?
Just wait youtube will go the way of p2p
You mean it will make up more than 50% of internet traffic at any given time? Not bad for a start.
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Well I'm sure someone put their own music that they had rights to on Napster to share with the world. I suppose the problem was that more people put up files they didn't have right to.
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I remember that too! I think it was called something like...Apache?
Re:Google is goin' down (Score:4, Insightful)
Arr.
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On one end you have people who thing everything should be free and anything is fair game.
And at the other extreme you have companies spending hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars for something that's at its core immaterial.
A bigger problem, to me, is how intrusive internet advertising has become, and that's to say nothing about the general crap quality of that advertising. These sites sell for so much money not becau
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I still don't understand what they were thinking. At this stage, I tend to doubt that the video-ads at the end of the YouTube videos that they've announced will cover the costs that are going to start piling up.
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The "licensed in the US" argument is irrelevant. These items infringe the copyrights of legitimate rights holders in another country that's also a member of WIPO. International treaties signed by the US have the force of law in the US.
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