Newsweek on Youtube and Haruhi Suzumiya

[Ether]

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is mentioned in an article about Youtube's overwhelming popularity with Japanese viewers. According to the article, Youtube's 6.4 million Japanese visitors last month are cause for concern with Japanese broadcasters. Youichi Ueno, a spokesman for Fuji Television Network, says that Fuji TV has 2 employees who search Youtube for illegal content and send up to several hundred removal requests a day



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ether on 2006-09-05 20:58 ]</font>

[Ether]

TBS is doing the same thing. All of the clips of Utaban were removed a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure what other shows from TBS were removed.

And I've also heard that Space Shower TV is requesting the removal of Japanese music videos with their logo on it.

So this isn't something just one station is doing. It's evidentally a pretty widespread practice now.

[Polly]

And while Japan is worrying about youtube.com, people from other countries are still uploading torrents of fansubs and selling Hong Kong bootlegs yet Japan hasn't stopped them yet, especially the whole Hong Kong bootleg problem that's been going on for ages and then there's still Google Video....

[geewj]

On 2006-09-06 23:08, Triela wrote:
And while Japan is worrying about youtube.com, people from other countries are still uploading torrents of fansubs and selling Hong Kong bootlegs yet Japan hasn't stopped them yet, especially the whole Hong Kong bootleg problem that's been going on for ages and then there's still Google Video....

The main problem Japan has with trying to do anything about the Hong Kong bootlegs is the fact that the bootlegging industry in Hong Kong IS an industry. There is such an enormous system in place for bootleging that it can't be stopped easily no matter how much effort they put in. Basically, unless the government in Hong Kong does a major (i.e. expensive and time-consuming) crack down, the Hong Kong bootleg empire will never fall.

YouTube is an easy target. It would probably be very easy for someone to completely eliminate YouTube with a major lawsuit or diminish it to unimportance like what happened with Napster.

Google Video might not be on their radar yet.

To be honest, I admire the Japanese restraint in all of these situations. If I were in charge of a company and someone was pirating my products, I'd use every tool at my disposal to destroy that group. To paraphrase classic military literature, I'd make a desert and call it peace.

Of course, that restraint is slowly fading to black rage.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

2 employess/x00 removal requests of bad clips/day

Minimum wage probably.