YouTube 'should check copyright'
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Video website YouTube should proactively check if videos infringe copyright, a rights group says.
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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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Entertainment conglomerate Viacom Inc. today sued video-sharing site YouTube and corporate parent Google Inc. over what it alleges is massive copyright infringement, escalating a battle over how video content is distributed over the Internet.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Google is set to start filtering videos and other content on YouTube for copyrighted materials, taking a key step in helping the online video-sharing site comply with one of the biggest complaints it faces _ rampant piracy.
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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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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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Independent music labels in the United States and Britain, upset with YouTube over how content is used on the site, are threatening legal action. The labels are upset with terms the social networking service proposed for the use of copyright-protected work, Billboard said Tuesday.
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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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A senior Walt Disney Co. executive  said she sees limits to how long her company will tolerate  copyright infringement of its programming by users of Google's  online video sharing site YouTube.
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'We'll mess with your copyrights. But don't mess with ours' Viacom has slapped an American political candidate for posting his own video to YouTube. With its latest YouTube crackdown, the media behemoth seems to be sending a new message to internet video-sharers across the globe: "You can't mess with our copyrighted content. But we can mess with yours."â¦
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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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LOS ANGELES - Internet search giant Google is under fire from Hollywood, mostly about the many unlicensed clips available on its YouTube video-sharing site. The studios have become more aggressive in demanding removal of the clips, and in a shot at Google itself, several entertainment companies have filed a lawsuit against two website owners over their use of Google's highly profitable search-advertising network.
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Universal Music Group, the world's   biggest record company, is stepping up pressure against popular   online sites YouTube and MySpace, accusing them of infringing   the copyrights of its artists' music videos.
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Can homegrown software help Google and YouTube defuse a $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom? That&#39;s the question underlying the announcement that Google is about to test a new system to ferret out unauthorized film and video clips on YouTube.
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YouTube, one of the world's most popular Web sites, might be headed for a crash. At least one industry watcher is predicting crippling copyright-violation litigation coming from the entertainment industry.
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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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(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.