YouTube Starts Filtering The Content

Bloomberg announced today that Google Inc.'s YouTube has struck a deal with a group that collects and distributes royalties and can legally begin to post copyrighted Japanese songs on its web site as early as next week.

The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, or JASRAC, last week agreed to provisionally allow record companies and others who hold rights to music to post copyrighted songs on YouTube, a video-sharing site, Nikkei English News said. Last December, an argument arose between the JASRAC and YouTube for the very same reason - videos of Japanese bands being uploaded by users without the owner of the copyright agreeing to that.

It was a serious matter at the time, as YouTube founders answered the complaint in person rather than marching their army of lawyers to the rescue and sent an envoy to meet with the group about other things that could have been done. At the moment, that was all that Google was planning on doing, and that upset the JASRAC, as it looked like YouTube had actually no reason to comply, the content would've still be uploaded, but on other video sharing sites and trying to police all of that content seemed like a huge burden.

And it all came to an end almost a year later, last week, when Google decided to accept the JASRAC's demands in principle, those of removing items with copyrighted songs and develop ways to stop unauthorized use of music on the site. EMI Music Japan Inc. and some other record companies may start showing promotional videos and other material containing Japanese songs as soon as this week, Nikkei reported. The fees for this will be collected retroactively by the respective corporations after reaching a formal agreement with Google, according to the same source.