Tokyo Demands YouTube Play Fair

eldavojohn writes "Recently, the city government of Tokyo has requested that political speeches to be pulled from YouTube, claiming that it gave certain hopefuls an advantage over others for Sunday's election. You may recall YouTube being in trouble with more than a few countries in the past. 'Japanese election law limits the broadcasting of speeches, which are aired only on public broadcaster NHK. Soon after the race kicked off last month, the speech by one fringe candidate, street musician Koichi Toyama, 36, has become a popular attraction on YouTube due to his eccentric, confrontational approach.' Is it fair that some government officials are being viewed more on YouTube than others or is it simply leveling the playing field for anyone with a message since it costs very little to put a video on YouTube?"

Japan demands Play Fair?

[Marrshu]

What's that, a new form of thought DRM?

Re:Uh...

[UbuntuDupe]

...the Japanese do realize that YouTube isn't the entire Internet, right?

Exactly. They need to be in negotiations with AOL, not YouTube.

Japanese people don't know how to give the bird

[caywen]

This is the second time I've seen a Japanese person miserably fail to give the bird in the correct way. I was telling my wife, who is Japanese, that when you give the bird, you look at the target in the eyes and put the bird in his face. You don't surreptitiously wave it around behind your podium. Argh, so many cultural gaps we need to bridge, so little time.