YouTube Removes 30,000 Japanese Video Files

Responding to demands from a group of Japanese copyright holders, YouTube has erased nearly 30,000 copyright-infringing video clips from its site.

It seems kids are going to have to look somewhere else for Naruto clips.

Online video sharing site YouTube has responded to demands from the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and removed some 29,549 video clips from its site on the grounds that their unauthorized distribution via YouTube violated copyright law.

JASRAC is a rights management agency which represents nearly two dozen Japanese media companies, including movie distributors and television networks. The group also said it plans to ask YouTube to pre-screen uploaded video to block the distribution of unauthorized files.

Although YouTube has in the past removed videos from its service at the request of copyright holders—including U.S. broadcast networks like NBC—the latest removals mark the largest deletion of content from the site in its (still short) history, and the first since Internet giant Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion earlier this month.