Google Pays Off JASRAC
Written by Jeshii on 2008.11.27 – 23:51 -
Japan Today is reporting that Google will now be paying royalties to JASRAC for Japanese music they have domain over on YouTube. They also claim, and this is the kicker, that users are now free to upload JASRAC managed music to YouTube.
マジっすか？！ I am really skeptical. I mean, for one, I am generally distasteful of the recording industry. And in the above video, they are called more of a collections agency than a copyright holding group. They apparently are generally unfair, but that sounds like any copyright collections agency. But at the same time, if we really can use JASRAC music however we want, this could be an amazing deal. And, this does seem like a very good move on JASRAC’s part to show they are with the times and not a dinosaur.
So, by using the JASRAC music search, you can find songs they own the rights to. They will have a blue circled “J” under the various columns when you click on the song name. I can’t tell which column would be the right one to use (there is musical performance, audio, video, film, commercial… @_@), so as long as they all have the J’s, it should be okay, right? (BTW, I am not a lawyer, so anything you put up is at your own risk!)
Anyway, I guess we will know if the Japanese music on YouTube starts sticking around instead of getting insta-deleted. Stay tuned!
Tags: copyfight, copyright, 音楽, google, Internet, JASRAC, music, nicovideo, rights, web, youtube
Posted in music | 2 Comments »
By Roy Berman on Nov 29, 2008 | Reply
Read more carefully. This only applies to rights of the music itself, NOT commercially available recordings. Essentially this means that Youtube users are now free to upload cover versions of JASRAC managed music, but music or video copied from commercially released CDs, DVDs, etc have the potential to be just as problematic as before.
By Jeshii on Nov 29, 2008 | Reply
Interesting. So all the vocaloid covers and such would be covered. I still want some further clarification on this! XD