A consortium of Japanese content owners have stepped up the pressure on YouTube and its owners Google over their failure to introduce proactive copyright content filtering on their video sharing platform. Twenty-four organisations, including the Japanese Society for Rights Of Authors, Composers And Publishers, who have taken previous action against the video sharing service, have said that the company still needs to take more action to stop copyright content being posted on their site.
As previously reported, this whole issue is due to go to court in the US, where Viacom have sued over the unauthorised hosting of their copyright content on YouTube's servers. Although in the US YouTube argue that, by committing to remove copyright content as soon as they are made aware of it, they are working within US copyright law, in Japan the firm has made more concessions to their critics in the content lobby. Plus YouTube bosses have said this week that new technology they are developing to better filter out copyright content should be live later this year.
But the consortium of Japanese content owners are demanding more action sooner. One of those involved in the campaign, composer Hideki Matsutake, told a press conference: "There is no middle ground. We demand that all copyrighted material be removed immediately".