Church asks Japan to join Sony campaign
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The Church of England on Wednesday urged the people of Japan to join its campaign against a violent Sony Corp. computer game that allegedly uses a British cathedral as a backdrop.
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Sony has begun talks with the Church of England over complaints that violent action sequences in a shooting game for the new PlayStation 3 console take place in what appears to be Manchester Cathedral.
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(InfoWorld) - A broad group of companies and associations covering most of the Japanese entertainment industry is calling on YouTube to be more proactive in policing its Web site for copyrighted material. In a letter sent Monday to YouTube Chief Executive Officer Chad Hurley and Chief Technology Officer Steve Chen, the group requests YouTube start a system that proactively identifies and removes copyrighted material rather than making rights holders find it and send in complaints. "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," said the letter, a copy of which was distributed to media Tuesday by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC). Monday's letter is signed by JASRAC and 22 other organizations including the Motion Picture Producers' Association of Japan, the Japan Video Software Association, the Association of Japanese Animations, all of the major commercial TV broadcasters, the Japan Satellite Broadcasting Association, the Recording Industry Association of Japan, and Yahoo Japan Corp. It comes a month and a half afterÂ YouTube deleted 29,549 filesÂ based on a complaint filed by JASRAC. The association said the files in question infringed on the rights of 23 Japanese content companies. Neither that complaint or YouTube's action didn't stop users uploading content to the site, and plenty of clips from Japanese TV shows can again be found on YouTube. "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," the letter said. "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." The preventative measures requested by the group include the posting of a message in Japanese on the YouTube home page warning that posting copyrighted material can be illegal; that users may be liable to civil or criminal prosecution; and a register of names and addresses of users posting content and the termination on-request of user accounts that are used or have been used since June 2006 illegally to upload copyrighted material. The group also requests a reply to the letter by Dec. 15. YouTube could not be immediately reached for comment. Â
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The Church of England on Sunday asked entertainment giant Sony to apologise and contribute a large donation for featuring a prominent British cathedral in a violent video game.
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Japan's Sony Corp plans to add an  Internet phone function to its PlayStation Portable (PSP) game  player in cooperation with eBay unit Skype to stir up demand,  the Nikkei business daily said on Saturday.
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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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By JILL LAWLESS  LONDON - Sony Corp. apologized Friday to the Church of England for a violent computer game that features a bloody shootout inside an Anglican cathedral.
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The Church of England wants Sony to remove Winchester Cathedral as a setting for video game battle.
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A Japanese government-backed organization will ask financial institutions to provide troubled retailer Daiei with 600 billion yen (5.7 billion dollars) in financial assistance.
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Sony, the Japanese electronics and entertainment group, has approached arch-rival Toshiba in an attempt to prevent a damaging format war over their next-generation DVDs.
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The Church of England is seeking legal action against Sony for featuring Manchester Cathedral in a war battle computer game.
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Sony Corp. will begin selling its first high-definition video camcorder in Japan on Oct. 15, and worldwide by the end of the year, the company said in an announcement Tuesday.
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Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pitched Japan's bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat to world leaders, calling it just reward for Tokyo's contributions to global peace and security.
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The Church of England threatened Saturday to sue Sony Corp. for featuring a cathedral in a violent computer game, saying it is sacrilegious and trivialises gun crime.
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Japan offers to help build one for the Indian Ocean.
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A conference on natural disasters opens in Japan with calls on the world to learn from the Asian tsunami.
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Internet music download company Napster launched a Japanese service Tuesday aimed at tapping the growing demand for music-to-go and catching up with Apple's iTunes in one of the world's biggest music markets.