Google and Tokyo-based media conglomerate Kadokawa Group Holdings announced a “new content partnership” today (Jan. 25) based on Google-developed video identification technology the two companies have been jointly testing.
“As the tests have now proved successful, Kadokawa Group will start a new project on [Google subsidiary] YouTube,” Kadokawa said in a statement.
That project comprises the launch of an official Kadokawa Group Web site on YouTube that will distribute videos created by Japanese artists. Kadokawa will sell ad space on the Web site and share revenues with video creators.
“The Kadokawa Group considers YouTube to be a useful consumer-generated medium and wants to work with it, while paying consideration to copyright protection,” the statement said.
“This is part of our continuing effort to work with copyright owners in Japan on copyright technologies,” said Google content partnerships VP David Eun at a press conference in Tokyo announcing the Google-Kadokawa partnership.
Japanese rights-holders groups, led by local authors society JASRAC, have expressed frustration with the ongoing problem of their copyrighted content being uploaded to the popular video-sharing website without rights-holders’ permission.
