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You Tube Japan Officially Launches - With Six Business Partnerships to Go Along

August 3, 2007
By Ken Worsley


Back in June, You Tube’s entry into the Japanese market was discussed on BizCast Japan over at Trans-Pacific Radio. At that time, You Tube had released a localized version of its site, apparently as a beta test. Today, however, the site’s full Japan release was announced, as well as six You Tube business tieups with Japanese firms.

Included in those business partnerships are satellite broadcaster Sky PerfecTV, social networking giant Mixi, Yoshimoto Kogyo, animator GDH, and Casio. Casio intends to build cameras specially-made for creating content that can be uploaded directly to You Tube.

Of course, not everyone is happy with this development. The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers stated that Google’s yet-to-be-rolled-out copyright detection software “will not be good enough.”

This debate is going to rage for some time, and Google/You Tube are going to have to be very careful about where they tread legally, but I must say that I am impressed by the six firms thus far that have, if nothing else, realized the marketing and brand synergy that You Tube offers.

Wired published a post on this issue, and I thought the author had one particularly insightful comment:

Although Japan’s “gross national cool” has taken the world by storm, only the most obsessed Western otaku (fans) know Japan’s popular television shows, music and movies. Frankly, the Japanese entertainment industry has recently been eclipsed by the emerging music/movie giant that is South Korea, so a little YouTube publicity is something that, in Japan’s case, should be nurtured as a way to expose the world to the country’s work. The worst thing that could happen to Japanese artists is for their work to disappear from YouTube.

I’m sure it’s not the ‘worst’ thing, but it certainly shows the artists that their management is hell-bent on keeping their collective heads in the sand.

Filed Under IT, Intellectual Property, Internet, Marketing | 3 Comments 

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