YouTube Removed 30,000 Japanese Videos from Site

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?"

Comments

automated dupe removal

[Speare]

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.

Re:I don't get it.

[TubeSteak]

I think the issue is more along the lines of "Does YouTube have an obligation to pre-screen videos?"

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?

That explains a few things.

[Nananine]

I headed up a group on Youtube that posted rare videos and live shows of independent Japanese bands. We went unmolested for the most part until the last months, when we were hit with a sweeping ban that affected some of our biggest contributors.

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?

[denix0]

I wonder, did they prove they have rights to those 30,000 videos? Or they just sent a note to GooTube requiring them to remove the videos and GooTube just silently swallowed that?

A Favorite Moment Of Japanese TV

[Chagatai]

Slightly OT, I know, but I just had to share. While in Japan for my honeymoon, I was often up at odd hours while my wife was sleeping because of the time change. I turned onto one comedy show that seemed like a cross between Jackass and MAD TV. They had a segment called, "No Reaction Theatre," where people had to continue acting while various distractions tried to draw their attention. In this case, people above them on the scaffolding would drop large aluminum foil cookpans onto their heads. It didn't hurt so much as cause a loud noise and throw them off. So they would be in the middle of this soap-opera-esque moment lamenting why someone died, with tears in their eyes, looking up, and then WHAM! Baking pan in the face! The show culminated with about 100 pans being dropped onto a group funeral scene over and over again.

They are geniuses. American TV could learn something from them.