YouTube offers concession to Japanese copyright group
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InfoWorld - YouTube will start displaying a notice in Japanese on its Web site warning users against uploading copyright content, its two founders told representatives of a broad group of Japanese copyright holders on Tuesday in their first&#160;face-to-face meeting.
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TOKYO -- A Japanese entertainment group has asked the popular video-sharing site YouTube Inc. to implement a system to prevent users from uploading videos that would infringe copyrights, a group spokesman said yesterday.
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Apple says that YouTube content will be available via it's Apple TV set-top box, which could lead to Apple's involvement in a copyright battle.
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Google Inc.'s  YouTube  has agreed to a breakthrough deal with major music label EMI  Group Plc  to give users of YouTube's video sharing site  broad access to music videos by EMI artists.
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Google says it will soon begin testing a long-awaited system that can block unauthorized copyrighted clips from being uploaded to YouTube.
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(InfoWorld) - ViacomÂ has sued Google, alleging copyright infringement from video-sharing site YouTube and seeking $1 billion in damages. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, follows a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) requestÂ Viacom sent to Google last monthÂ related to the unauthorized posting of Viacom videos to YouTube. At the time,Â Viacom demanded that GoogleÂ remove more than 100,000 of its clipsÂ from YouTube, which Google acquired last year for $1.65 billion. Google said it would comply with the request. In escalating its battle with YouTube with this lawsuit, Viacom reiterates that YouTube has allowed and benefitted from "massive intentional" copyright violations of Viacom videos. In addition to $1 billion inÂ damages, Viacom is asking the court for an injunction barring Google and YouTube from continuing the alleged infringement, Viacom said Tuesday in a statement. Google stands ready to fight the allegations and is confident that "YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders," a Google spokesman said via e-mail. "We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic, and build a stronger community," he wrote. Almost 160,000 Viacom video clips have been uploaded to YouTube without permission and have been viewed over 1.5 billion times, Viacom alleges. "YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google," Viacom charged in the statement. Google and YouTube illegally profit from the traffic that the unauthorized videos draw to their sites by selling advertising, according to Viacom, which added that YouTube has been lax in its attempts to stop its users from uploading copyrighted videos without permission. Viacom decided to sue Google after negotiations and other measures failed to halt the alleged copyright infringement in YouTube, Viacom said. Viacom is a media conglomerate whose properties include MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, and Paramount Pictures. The case is unlikely to result in a total shutdown of YouTube because legitimate uses of the site exist beyond the potentially illegal activities Viacom is objecting to, said Sheldon Klein, an attorney specializing in intellectual-property matters and a partner at Arent Fox LLP in Washington, D.C. However, Google may find itself liable to the infringement claims if Viacom proves that Google and YouTube didn't do all that was possible to prevent users from uploading copyrighted videos without permission, especially after being served with the DMCA notice last month, Klein said. Specifically, if YouTube and Google haven't implemented available technology that would allow them to do a better job of filtering out infringing videos, Viacom could have a legitimate argument in saying they're not trying hard enough, he said. A check of YouTube at noon Eastern time showed multiple instances of Viacom-owned videos, including clips from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and from Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants." One of the "SpongeBob" clips found, for example, has been on YouTube since Feb. 5 of this year, while one of "The Daily Show" clips was uploaded in October of last year. Google executives have said the company is developing technology to address the issue of infringing downloads on YouTube and have promised to deliver it in the near future. Google didn't immediately provide an explanation of what, if any, filtering and detection technology exists in YouTube today. In the meantime, competitorsÂ such asÂ News Corp.'s MySpace, which also lets users upload videos to its site, have licensed third-party systems for detecting infringing videos. There are a number of companies that make this type of software, including Audible Magic, the one chosen by MySpace.
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YouTube's new video fingerprinting technology is designed to help copyright owners identify content uploaded without permission.
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YouTube is offering no refuge for users who uploaded copies of Fox Television&#8217;s 24 and Simpsons according to Internet.com&#8217;s ASPnews.  A 20th Century Fox spokesperson says that Google and Live Digital have complied &#8220;with subpoenas issued by the U.S. District Court in Northern California and disclosed to Fox the identities of two individuals who illegally [...]
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By Jon Swartz  SAN FRANCISCO -- Days after clashing with Google's YouTube in a public spat over copyright protection, Viacom has found a new partner to air its content online.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has promised to give content makers control overÂ advertisements overlaid on video clipsÂ they post to its YouTube video sharing Web site. The company is seeking further feedback on the video advertising service as a rising number ofÂ YouTube users threaten to leave the siteÂ if the advertising feature is not improved. Only videos from content creators that have signed up for the advertising scheme, called InVideo, will host ads, leaving the majority of videos on YouTube free of the overlays, a Google spokesman said Friday. Advertisers will still be able to reach a large audience through YouTube videos even if the company only places ads in a small portion of videos. "And our users are not shy about telling us what they like and what they don't, so it behooves us to be careful," said Shashi Seth, YouTube Group Product Manager, in an e-mailed statement. YouTube launched the InVideo adsÂ on Wednesday. They start as an overlay on the bottom 20 percent of a video and people can click to watch the advertisement, or if not, the ad will simply disappear. Clicking on the overlay pauses the video, which resumes after the ad finishes. So far, responses to the new advertising system, posted on YouTube's blog, have been negative. People are passionate about the issue, with many threats to leave YouTube for other sites, such as Myspace.com or Break.com. "As a viewer of videos I don't want to see any of the content of the video covered up. I only had one video posted myself, which I have just removed. Bye!," writes user KPDover, in a comment. As of early Friday, the total number of comments had reached 669, with many repeats, but still a substantial increase to the 132 comments posted Thursday at around the same time. YouTube hopes it can change people's minds about InVideo ads, and sees them as a way to generate revenue for the site without being too intrusive. They are designed to interfere as little as possible with viewing and be relevant to the video. Warner Media, part of Time Warner, is one company that has signed up to allow overlays to be used on its music videos, and some of the ads are for other Warner music. Still, YouTube users complain that 20 percent is a huge amount of space on the small video screens, enough to detract from the viewing experience. YouTube plans to continue on with the InVideo overlays, and hopes "to make the ads an important part of the advertising model for online video," said Aaron Zamost, from Google corporate communications. The InVideo ads users are seeing on YouTube videos are the result of two months of testing. The company tried other methods of video advertising, including pre-roll video, but the in-video ads simply worked better. Videos that started with pre-roll advertisements were shut down 70 percent of the time, according to Google, while only 10 percent of in-video ads were abandoned. In addition, the number of people clicking to play an InVideo ad were 5 percent to 10 percent greater than the number of people clicking on a standard banner ad, the company says. The company uses software to match ads to videos, and can pinpoint an audience closely. For example, an advertiser could place an InVideo ad targeting 18-24 year old soccer fans in Los Angeles, to be played between 6pm to 11pm local time. The ads are placed by genre, demographic, time of day and geographic location. The technology behind YouTube's InVideo was all developed in house, but Zamost points out, the company never said it invented overlay technology. It did not. Time will tell if YouTube figures out a way to ensure its community grows accustomed to InVideo advertisements. Early on, YouTube rivals may have an opportunity to scoop up disaffected users. There are plenty of alternative video sharing Web sites on the Internet. But whether YouTube users like it or not, the company is committed to moving forward with InVideo ads. Â
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By CARL FREIRE TOKYO - Popular video-sharing Web site YouTube Inc. has agreed to post Japanese language warnings about respecting copyrights in an attempt to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials, a Japanese entertainment body said.
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Royalties, please The chief of the world's biggest record label, Universal Music Group, has hinted that the company will sue the video sharing site YouTube for copyright infringement.â¦
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By ALEX VEIGA LOS ANGELES - Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, contends the wildly popular Web sites YouTube and MySpace are violating copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content involving Universal artists.
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By BILL CONDIE  GOOGLE, which is enlisting American trade negotiators to fight growing internet censorship, has agreed to censor its own YouTube site in Thailand.
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Tokyo, Dec. 15 (Jiji Press)--Japan's House of Councillors on Friday passed into law a bill to revise the copyright law, mainly to facilitate the Internet technology-based distribution of video and audio content.
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(InfoWorld) - YouTube will start displaying a notice in Japanese on its Web site warning users against uploading copyright content, its two founders told representatives of a broad group of Japanese copyright holders on Tuesday in their firstÂ face-to-face meeting. The Japanese language message was the only concession YouTube offered in the meeting, according to those present. No time frame was given for when the message will appear. The meeting, which ran for about two hours, was held in response to aÂ complaint made in DecemberÂ last year by a group of 23 Japanese TV broadcasters and associations representing copyright holders. The group had also asked YouTube to register the names and addresses of users making uploads and terminate the accounts of those who illegally upload copyrighted content. "The meeting went quite well and it was a very friendly manner," said Satoshi Watanabe, manager of the transmission rights department at the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. JASRAC sent the original complaint on behalf of the other companies and associations and Tuesday's meeting was held at its Tokyo headquarters. "We are very satisfied with the direct negotiation realized and this should be a first step to carrying on... but their reply itself is not satisfactory today so we'd like to solve the issues," he said. YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, Chief Technology Officer Steven Chen and GoogleÂ Vice President of Contents Partnership, David Eun, attended the meeting but didn't offer any comments afterwards and sped away from JASRAQ in waiting taxis. Later, YouTube issued a brief statement that confirmed its commitment to respect copyright and thanked the organizations for the meeting. At the meeting the YouTube founders outlined their plans to develop a system that will be able to automatically scan uploaded video files and identify some that infringe on copyright, but no time frame was given for the launch of the system, representatives of the Japanese group said at a news conference. They also confirmed plans to begin paying uploaders for popular content providing the uploader owns the copyright. If such a service was to begin it would require uploaders to register their real names and addresses with YouTube in order to receive payment and that step would likely mean such users are unlikely to infringe on copyrighted material. The Japanese copyright holders are spooked by YouTube's site because of the large number of Japanese clips and users. The complaint was prompted afterÂ YouTube deleted 30,000 filesÂ judged to infringe on copyright of Japanese organizations and new files quickly found their way onto the site. YouTube is easily the most popular English-language Web site in Japan and one of the most popular overall. According to some estimates a third of all its traffic comes from Japan. The meeting comes days after YouTube found itselfÂ in hot-water with Viacom International, which owns cable channels such as MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central. Viacom demanded over 100,000 clips be removed from YouTube because they contained its copyrighted content. Viacom had been talking to YouTube for several months trying to work out a revenue sharing scheme under which it could share profit from the clips but lost patience with YouTube when the talks made little progress. Copyright issues have been buzzing around YouTube ever since it became a household name and kick-started the online video sharing market. Google acquired YouTubeÂ in a $1.65 billion all-stock deal in November last year. With such a high value attached to the site, some suggested it became a bigger target for content providers unhappy at their material being uploaded to YouTube. Google appears to have shared the concern and put aside 12.5 percent of the acquisition amount in an escrow account for one year to "secure certain indemnification obligations." Since the acquisition YouTube and Google have been negotiating with copyright holders. Â
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Executives of YouTube.com are to meet a  group of Japanese media firms that complained to the video  sharing Internet site over copyright infringement, the Japanese  organization said.