In late 2006 a coalition of 23 of Japan's biggest TV broadcasters and copyright organisations, alarmed at the uncontrolled spread of their content on the Internet, were preparing to battle YouTube. Two years on, the video-sharing site has just signed a site-wide licensing agreement for its content and is telling Japanese content owners that user-uploads of copyrighted content aren't necessarily a threat.
Armed with a new tech toolkit to identify the owner of uploaded content, YouTube says it is committed to making money for its partners.
"We really want to focus on monetisation," said David Eun, the company's vice president of content partnerships and one of the executives originally sent to Japan to allay industry fears. He was speaking at a Tokyo news event held to outline YouTube's business plan for the coming year.
"We really understand that YouTube can provide a fantastic opportunity for research, reach to send content and distribute it to new audiences but we also understand that revenues are very, very important," he said.
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