Today there was a message waiting on my desk at Geruma that said the Aka vice-principal wanted to talk to me. I hate it when somebody "wants to talk to me." But I figured it must be about the Canada homestay presentation I was planning to attend after school.
It wasn't. He got a call this morning from Yukie Nakama's agency. They found my video and wanted it taken down. I told him I'd have it down as soon as I got home. I also apologized to him but he brushed it off as no big deal.
So I got home and immediately checked all my blog and youtube stats to see if I'd really caused any problems. But it appears that nobody linked to my blog by searching for Yukie's name. My blog hits did spike yesterday slightly, but that might have just been because it was my first post in five days. The youtube stats, though, were a little more telling. In just two days the video had 283 views. That's quite a few, I think. The video also showed up on just the third (of 30) page of results.
I'm really curious as to how they found it. I wonder if somebody tipped them off or if they are actually doing searches on her name to catch stuff like this?
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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5 comments:
I don't understand why the agency has the right to ask you to withdraw the photos or film in the Youtube.
I think it doesn't violate the copyright. No law or regulation can prevent you from doing that.
Also a big fan of Nakama Yukie from Taiwan.
I once had a marketing internship where all I did for a month was make reports of any online conversations that mentioned Pergo flooring, because they were one of our clients. That was 1998 - its way more sophisticated now.
There are all sorts of tools (both automatic and manual) to monitor media by keyword now, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are keeping an eye on it.
People have what are often referred to as "image rights". They are the rights to prevent unauthorised use of their name, likeness or other personal attributes, such as physical or style characteristics, signatures, nicknames or slogans associated with them. Some countries have legislation which specifically covers this, others do not. But there might be some other legislation which covers such eventualities. You would have to check.
It might be that, even though not widely advertised, it was - technically - available over the whole Internet.
I did some research today on photographers' rights in Japan but didn't come up with what I was looking for to warrant another blog post. ucafe, you raise an interesting point I hadn't considered - and in fact I did find a reference today about famous people having special rights to their images. But everything I have found is related to SELLing the images/likeness of that star. I am reasonably sure that I am okay to put these photos up on my blog as long as I am not getting paid for it. (in complete agreement with you, lbrahimbao.)
However, I did all of this on school property so I think the principal can technically make/enforce the rules with me. I doubt he realizes that he can defy the requests of Yukie's marketing agency with legal backing, but even if he did he wouldn't because everybody is just so starstruck with her and they love that our school and students will be on national television.
I am not going to defy the principal because it's not worth jeopardizing my job. But this certainly raises some interesting issues on my rights as a photographer.
yeah Katy, I bet they just have a program that lets them know when something interesting pops up, huh? I'm really surprised that nothing came through via the keyword tracking on my blog, though.
You showed Yukie Nakama's tv show on your blogsite on Dec 6 09.I think the company can easily detect it by using Digital Transmission Content Protection.I may be wrong.
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