Free and legal anime on YouTube
Variety/Tech-On report that Kadokawa Group, the company that owns the rights to popular anime such as Lucky Star and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, will be putting some of its content up on YouTube for free viewing:
Starting in June, when Kadokawa finds its toons on YouTube, it will check to see if the person/company that posted the content is legit rather than immediately ordering YouTube to take it down.
If the person/company is OK’ed, Kadokawa will run ads on the poster’s Web page and divide the revenue with YouTube and the poster. This business model is a first for the Japanese biz.
Until now, Japanese visual contents rights holders, including TV nets and pic producers, have policed YouTube and similar sites for illegal use of their content and notified the site owners when they spot what they consider a pirate.
Kadokawa, however, wants to encourage legit uses of its toons, while spreading the international word about them on YouTube and reaping profits in the bargain.
The YouTube channel can be viewed here.
[hat tip to FG]
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Wow, I hope this would be a breakthrough for TV businesses, there are ‘illegal’ videos all over anyway, and people actually do buy DVDs after watching those (including myself).
Good to see Kadokawa taking a similar step to what Gonzo did earlier this year. Hopefully we’ll start to see in-house translated and subbed anime on this soon.
Yeah. Its about time.
most people who upload illegal content onto youtube, didn’t realize it is illegal, just like those who download music. How idiotic is that.
Well I think most do know that.. just the difference is that most of videos are not as high-quality as DVD versions (maybe except veoh.. but there’s still 2GB cap) so it could be considered an advertisement in a way, just as Kadokawa group acknowledged months earlier about the effectiveness of those ‘illegal’ videos to advertise their animes. The uploaders at the most likely risk are those who share their content through P2P; there were incidents of 3 guys being arrested for doing that this month in Japan.
Wow, a company with some SENSE! Amazing.
Tag this suddenoutbreakofcommonsense. Oh wait, this isn’t slashdot.
I’ve been watching Tower of Druaga on youtube instead of downloading it. The video quality isn’t nearly as good, but it’s worth showing support for a good practice.
I understand Yoshimoto Kogyo’s got their own channel on YT now as well.