Japanese rights holders protest again to YouTube
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A month and a half after protests by a Japanese copyright-protection group caused YouTube to delete nearly 30,000 files, that group and others in the country have filed a second protest with the popular site.
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Internet users in Morocco unable to access the video-sharing Web site YouTube since last week expressed fears Tuesday that the government has stepped up its campaign to restrict independent media.
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&#160;China watchers, get your scorecards out: Google&#39;s YouTube is blocked,&#160;Wikipedia is still blocked, but, for the moment, Google blog site Blogspot.com is available and some pictures from Yahoo&#39;s Flickr photos can once again be viewed.China-based users accessing YouTube since Wednesday afternoon began receiving the dreaded &quot;The server at www.youtube.com is taking too long to respond,&quot; the typical response when a user attempts to view a site that has been blocked.Google&#39;s blog site, Blogspot, is currently available after being blocked in June. An unblocking of the site last year led to the availability of a Shanghai-based foreign blogger known as Chinabounder, whose blog recounted the author&#39;s sexual exploits with Chinese women while working as an English teacher. The posts ultimately led to an unsuccessful hunt for the author and a temporary closing of the blog. Google did not respond to a request for comment on YouTube&#39;s block and Blogspot&#39;s availability.Photo site Flickr is once again displaying most of its photos, after its pictures, but not the site itself, were blocked in June. The Flickr photo block was the most obvious indicator that China&#39;s blocking technology goes beyond simple domain restrictions, but could target sub-domains. Even now, some Flickr images remain blocked while others display. For example, searching for the term &quot; Beijing &quot; from a China-based computer displays the larger photos on the left, but the avatars of users do not load.China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects such as the Falun Gong religious cult and independence for Taiwan and Tibet, along with some pornographic sites. However, while both Playboy.com and Penthouse.com are available, the British Broadcasting Corp.&#39;s news site is not. The Chinese government does not announce or comment when a site is blocked or made available.The current blocking may be&#160;related to the Communist Party Congress, which began Oct. 15 in Beijing and ends Sunday. Held once every five years, the meeting is the Chinese government&#39;s most important political gathering, used to create five-year plans, which are the bedrock of China&#39;s centrally-planned economy. It is also often used to reshuffle government positions or for leaders to consolidate their power.&quot;It is never clear why the authorities block or unblock access to Web sites,&quot; said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of Danwei.org, a Beijing-based, English-language media blog. &quot;With the 17th Communist Party Congress currently taking place in Beijing, China&#39;s media regulators and media organizations are on high alert for anything the Party might find objectionable.&quot;
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Japan's prime minister has begun posting English-language messages on the video-sharing Internet site YouTube in an apparent bid to raise his country's international profile.
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(InfoWorld) - Top executives from YouTube are due in Tokyo next week for talks with some of Japan's largest video content producers over copyrighted material available on the popular site. The meeting is due to take place Tuesday, just over two months after a group of Japanese content producersÂ sent a letter of complaintÂ to YouTube, urging the company to do more to keep copyrighted material off its service. YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and Chief Technology Officer Steve Chen are among those due at the talks, said a spokesman for the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC). JASRAC sent the original complaint, which carried its signature along with that of 22 other companies and groups. Among the signatories were all of Japan's TV networks, the Motion Picture Producers' Association of Japan, the Recording Industry Association of Japan, and Yahoo Japan. The complainants are unhappy about the amount of their content available on YouTube. They demanded in the original letter that YouTube make it easier and quicker for content to be removed once it has been identified as violating copyright, and for the company to make it tougher for users to upload copyrighted material. YouTube respondedÂ to the complaint in mid-December and said they could visit Japan to discuss the issue. The letter indicated that YouTube is keen to work with the content providers because it is interested in starting a business in Japan, according to JASRAC. The December complaint followedÂ YouTube's deletionÂ of just under 30,000 files that violated the copyright of Japanese rights holders. The files were discovered during a five-day audit of YouTube in October. However, as soon as the files were deleted, new unauthorized content started appearing.
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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.
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Iran has blocked access to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube.com, and a media rights group warned Tuesday that Internet censorship in the Islamic state is on the rise.
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Thailand's on-again off-again relationship with YouTube has taken another bad turn, as the government said it will go to court to have two videos blocked that it says were a threat to national security.
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Thailand is seeking to block clips on  video-sharing Web site YouTube, accusing the chief royal  adviser of being the mastermind of the bloodless coup last  year, a top Justice Ministry official said on Friday.
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(InfoWorld) - A press advocacy group is "dismayed" about Google's decision to block YouTube videos from viewers in Thailand that are considered inappropriate or illegal by that Asian government. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), calling Google's reported agreement with the Thai government "a censorship deal," said on Wednesday that the move creates "a dangerous precedent, which could have global implications for freedom of expression." "There is a clear potential for abuse of people's right to information, which seems much more likely now [that] Google has demonstrated its willingness to collude with governments to effectively censor information," IFJ Asia-Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said in a statement. The Thailand Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. On Friday and during the weekend, various news outlets reported from Bangkok that Thailand had lifted a five-month ban on YouTube for its residents after Google agreed to block videos the government finds objectionable. In an article posted Friday, the International Herald Tribune quoted Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, Thailand's minister of information and communications technology, as saying that YouTube had agreed to block clips deemed offensive to Thai culture or that violate Thai law. People accessing YouTube from outside of Thailand will be able to view the videos blocked in that country, the minister told the International Herald Tribune. Thailand blocked all access to Google's YouTube, the world's most popular video-sharing site, in early April after someone posted a video the government considered insulting to the country's king. YouTube is "pleased to hear" that access to its site has been reinstated in Thailand, a YouTube spokesman said via e-mail Wednesday. "We appreciate the constructive dialogue we have had with the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Ministry.Â YouTube remains committed to removing videos when they violate our content policies, and we will continue to work closely with authorities in Thailand," the YouTube spokesman wrote. YouTube has taken steps to make sure that its users in Thailand will not be able to access videos that have been identified as violating the country's laws, he confirmed. Asked if YouTube's parent company had any reaction to the IFJ's criticism, he said the question should answered by a Google official. At press time, no one from Google had responded to this question. Those found guilty of offending the monarchy face serious penalties in Thailand. Days before the YouTube incident, a Swiss national living in Thailand got slapped with a 10-year jail sentence for defacing images of the king. This is the latest incident in which Google and other providers of Internet services, such as Yahoo and Microsoft, find themselves criticized for censorship by human rights organizations, press advocacy groups, U.S. legislators, and shareholders. For example, several Internet companies have been criticized for agreeing to censor content in their China sites and search engines that the Chinese government finds objectionable. Yahoo in particular has been blasted often for cooperating with the Chinese governmentÂ and providing information that has led to the arrest of dissidents and journalists. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others invariably defend themselves saying that they must comply with the local laws of the countries in which they do business and that governments must collaborate to establish international standards of operation. "We always welcome constructive discussions with local governments around the world on similar issues. We are committed to addressing these questions in ways that both respect relevant laws and cultural concerns and are consistent with our global content policies," the YouTube spokesman wrote. When it comes to content that may break local laws, YouTube works with local authorities to resolve the issues. "We think this approach strikes the right balance betweenÂ freedom of expression and respect for local law," he wrote. Thailand recently introduced the Computer Crime Act, which gives authorities the power to seize the computers of people suspected of accessing or creating content deemed insulting or pornographic, according to the IFJ. Activist, social worker and webmaster Sombat Bun-ngam-anong is currently serving a 12-day detention order for alleged defamation for violating the Act, the IFJ said in Wednesday's statement. Also on Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders, another international press watchdog group, reported that a Thai blogger named Pichai has been reportedly detained for the past 12 days, also for violating the Act, which this group says took effect on July 18. The blogger's arrest "confirms our fears about the dangers of a law that is supposed to combat pornography but turns out to be a way of restricting and controlling press freedom," Reporters Without Borders charged.
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Japan issued a tourist visa yesterday for former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, prompting another round of angry protests from China.
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A dispute between an atheist group and a creationist group over some postings on YouTube  has critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act crying foul. They say it's a new and disturbing trend, and that false copyright claims can distort political and cultural debate.
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BERLIN  - The director and producers of a documentary about Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are among the 2.5 million venerated souls, have received multiple death threats from right-wing groups that want to prevent the movie's local release.
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Blog: Chopper pilot suing YouTube is angered that pirated clips appear on the iPhone.
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Blog: YouTube suspending accounts over age limits.
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Japan urged Australia Tuesday to take legal action against two anti-whaling protestors who climbed aboard a Japanese whaler in Antarctic seas last week, a foreign ministry statement said.
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Much ado about Ataturk A Turkish court has banned YouTube access after someone complained that the world's most popular video sharer was hosting clips that insulted the country's founding father. And, yes, you've heard all this before.â¦