AKB48 Group x SHOWROOM

wasn't it pretty much what they used last year though? They didn't announced that officially, but iirc those 3 were top in room level at that time and Onishi missed out because she took the 3rd place few days after the counted period (but about that I've seen various claims, anyway no way to find out now).

ofc it's only a guess they gonna use it this year as well, though it's hard to find a metrics by which those top 3 aren't top 3 (the only other candidate I could understand would be Macharin for the foreign "quirkiness" aspect)

 

^ You're right about last year. There were some criteria but in the end the winners also had the higher room levels. But there wasn't actually a "race" because it counted their performance "along the year", not just a few weeks like the SSK one. The only one that really rushed was Jurina, others pretty much kept "normal life".

The only really good thing in this award are the cushions tho, nothing more. It didn't change anything for Rikachan, didn't help Nomura Nao at all and I sincerely have no idea why Jurina wanted to win it so badly. =P

 

3rd Draft Candidate SHOWROOM
10/28 - 11/7
17.00 JST

https://www.showroom-live.com/event/akbdraft3rd_audition
https://twitter.com/SHOWROOM_jp/status/923822267691237376

 

some youtube channels whih has a lot of akb48 showroom videos are being deleted?

 

Not some, all of them

 

Order 66 has been issued...

Even SQUR is down holy sheeet

I know there are some rougue Jedis still survives, I won't share their channel out it's my last hope for my Hinachan SRs T ^ T

Spoiler

if the video does not show watch the video here

 

No, not all of them, just some. The last two major remaining archives, masa kobya and はるきTV, are still up and running, you can go there even in case you need to do a backup of the Showroom videos you liked the most. Then there's a lot of small and less relevant repositories, many of which haven't been used in months, which I'd rather leave unnamed but are as easy to find.
Meanwhile, new channels have popped up as replacement and started uploading new content from the point where the deleted ones left off, and they seem to have been left undisturbed for now in spite of their constant activity.

I still maintan the belief that the copyright infringements that caused the deletion of these channels have nothing to do with the Showroom streams themselves, as I already explained to y'all in the Rika thread.

On a related note, there's a poster (namely, #2) in the comment section of this matome blog who claims to be Kaeru4648, who expained how things went down with his channel. Take a look at it. He's been circulating the same message in the comment section of every matome blog that picked up the news, by the way:
http://www.akb48rompen.com/archives/52402446.html

Basically:
- As soon as this month began, several complaints of copyright infringment came from SHOWROOM inc. itself in short order, resulting in the channel's termination.
- Even though the content was being monetized by AKS Co., Ltd., he was still free to upload anything without restrictions up until then, including karaoke streams.
- Starting from last month, the videos then started being blocked from viewing in China (I can confirm this also happens to some reuploads I did, it seems to be an automatic process that happens as soon as the video is uploaded and detected by the system, but AKS won't take any further steps other than blocking the video in China. So if you see a notice of this after uploading something, don't try filing any counter-dispute and just leave it alone). The rest is history.
- This is the most important part: in Kaeru's case, the videos that received a strike for copyright infringement were all Sashihara videos. He wonders if it has something to do with her agency, but as things stand we'll probably never find out the truth.

The bottom line is, from now on, when uploading Showroom material, here's some content to definitely stay away from:
- ANN pre-show specials: apparently this is what got Kenneth Uy's channel down.
- One more thing that all these deleted channels had in common was that they uploaded Draft streams recently, maybe there's a privacy issue with uploading videos of regular girls who are still in their audition phase, and thus they're still not to be considered public figures yet. Who knows.
- Sashihara's SR content. Besides, it's not like she has ever done anything interesting in her broadcasts, enough to justify jeopardizing any more channels with thousands of videos inside.
If you have any contact with the owners of those channels, spread the word.

 

it's all fine and dandy, but I still think that it's just a matter of time (most probably a very short time) before remaining channels will get a ban, because target is most probably SR recordings in general, not some specific ones. we had a paradise with many channels only a week ago and now we have what... a couple of lucky survivors who just happen to have a more obscure content, to which SR just hasn't got around yet. as we've seen, channels weren't banned all at once, they are deleted gradually, which probably means that SR introduces new video filters gradually starting from the most popular ones. and once they get rid of the popular ones, they'll start to filter the rest as well, and videos will be taken down not in a week, but in few hours/minutes like it happens now with MVs and shows.

even if it seems that some specific videos got strikes, it's probably because they were used as filter examples first. it's probably harder for SR to control video uploads automatically than for music/show uploads, where they can filter by music or video samples and get majority of copyrighted content taken down. in Showroom's case, they have a lot more content generated every day without strong characteristics (no music, different length and quality), so they probably have to filter by samples of most popular videos first (Sasshi, and shows that are watched by majority of fans like ANN and draft).

 

Is Sashiharas appearance copyrighted or what? Otherwise I don't get it why are videos with her deleted.

 

↓

 

As soon as there is a broadcasting company behind, it is under copyright.

 

Nah, the most popular videos in any of these channels weren't even Sashihara's, just to let you know. Not even close.
Just do a test on the remaining channels and sort the list of videos from the most popular to see what I mean: the topmost who got the most views are almost invariably random broadcasts from random members that happened to catch the attention of bored 2ch trolls for whatever reason (in fact, the comment section of any of these is just a mess of clueless shitposting, standing as a testament to it).

 

Now that makes sense cuz all the panchira and cleavage shots in some SRs usually get pretty high views, just saying

 

who cares? buy an avatar instead
https://www.showroom-live.com/avatar_shop

 

Well, I'm considering buying the Cinnamon ones already.

That'd be pretty much the only avatars I see worth getting for fans, you know~

 

O shoot I got to tweet this to Hinachan to get her My Melody

 

number of views has no relevancy in this case, what's important is how widespread a video is. copyright holders won't go to every channel, search most viewed videos, then go to other 100500 channels and see if a video of some random kenkyuusei (for example) is there or not, then repeat it every time a new video appears etc. they need the simplest method to automatically take down videos and channels. so they take the most popular member who has a lot of videos (especially compared to other popular members, there is no point in filtering Mayu or Sayanee, for example, since they have almost no SR videos), and who has the highest chance of getting their videos on majority of channels - in our case it's Sasshi - apply filter to a few of her videos and boom! you have 90% of channels killed "with one stone" (in this case it should be at least 3 "stones", since there must be 3 strikes before ban). the same logic applies to videos of draftees and ANN - since those are "group" videos, there is higher probability that those videos are in higher demand and will be uploaded on more channels. filter them and you'll take down channels who upload recent popular stuff. once again - there in no need to actually see how viewed or widespread videos are, the simplest logic is enough for "carpet bombing". the more time will pass, the more filters SR will apply and less chances uploaders will have to slip through those filters no matter how obscure their content will be, so I kinda get the idea of not posting those popular videos of Sasshi/ANN/draftees, but I don't think that it'll help in the long run anyway - once SR started banhammering accounts with SR videos, I doubt it'll stop halfway. in the end, uploaders will just drop uploading, because of fear of their efforts going to waste in a flash, because of some new filter from SR.

btw, another thing that indicates that those bans are Showroom's doing and not other agency's - most probably the one who is holding the copyrights to SR videos is Showroom itself, not AKS or any other talent agency that members are signed to. for example, for all those years that I watch Japanese TV shows, not even once I saw a video being taken down because of a claim from talent agency. all those popular variety shows like "London Hearts", "Ame Talk", etc. that are packed with comedians and guests from the biggest agencies like Yoshimoto, Johnnys, Burning, Amuse, etc. are all taken down because of the claims from TV stations/distributors/advertising agencies and never from talent agencies.

 

I was replying to you that way just because it was you that brought up the concept of "popularity", which in terms of Youtube it only means standing out by having the most traffic. There's no point in arguing semantics here.

I don't see Sashihara's SR content racking in the most attention anyway. For one thing: do not underestimate how a troll thread on 2ch has much more power to direct public attention to some specific videos, than just some stream of Sashihara karaoke'ing with her cat, especially if it was uploaded without even a Twitter notice from the channel's owner.
Nor do I see any sign of demand for Sashihara's SR content, or her videos being more widespread than your average SR videos. We are talking about a handful large channels -- in reality it's 6 or 7 at one given time (not "100500" as you believe) -- that update daily, so it's quite easy to verify how many copies are kept, you know. Even better if you have all of them in your Subscription feed and can see the full picture at once.
Considering also that each uploader uses their own recordings (as it can be guessed from video length, image quality and possible stutters caused by connection problems on the recording user's side), this "spread" is actually a matter of how much free space they have on their HDD. If anything, I imagine they'd rather not waste resources and bandwidth recording something if they already know that someone else is going to record and upload a SR stream on their behalf.

The theory that the deletion of these videos could be related to a complaint from Sashihara's agency was just Kaeru's conjecture, that's all. I've reported his message in full and as it is just because I believe it is best to bring to the table everything he wrote about his experience, not just some bits and pieces.
It's obvious that the copyright claimant was, at least on the surface, SHOWROOM. This is what he explictily wrote on the message, after all. There's no debate here.
What we need to know is what content they are after and for what reasons.
End of story.

---

Speaking of which, anyone wants to know one more funny thing?
Like Kaeru wrote in his message and like it has also been mentioned in the original 2ch thread beforehand, AKS makes money out of all these Showroom uploads. And they've been doing it since who knows how long.
Anyone can try it and find it out themselves: upload a video you already have or some freshly-recorded one. It's going to happen instantly or take some time, depending on whether Youtube's system finds a close match already in their video archives or it's some completely original content, but they're all, without exception, going to be automatically detected as having content copyrighted by AKS.
Now, go to the Video Manager page of the control panel and these are the messages that will be probably greeting you.

As soon as the video is detected two things will automatically happen in the settings: the video will be blocked in China, AND the video will be monetized by the copyright claimant, which is AKS.
Now, as a copyright claimant they would have all the rights in the world to take down your video, but it's clearly AKS's policy to allow it to stay up ("You can use the copyrighted content in your video"). In exchange for that, all the ad revenue coming from viewing the video will go into their pockets instead. This is what "Monetized by claimant" means, and it's a harmless alternative to copyright strikes. More about it here.
Granted, it takes lots of clicks on banners and many more views than just a few hundreds to generate money, but AKS's aims are evident in this compromise.
All of this means that having these videos available on Youtube, as long as they're free of any manipulation, is not only for the benefit of fans, but also for the benefit of the agency.
When AKS chooses these automatic measures to apply to their content, it follows that nobody has any intention of deleting the SR recordings per se, much less "carpet bombing" entire channels. On the contrary, AKS probably wants you to upload more so as to get a bigger share of ad money thanks to your hard work.
Therefore, there must be some reason unrelated to AKB behind their deletion.

---

Addendum: as for these audition/Draft SR being the target of these copyright strikes, all I can say is that I feel my suspicions have been confirmed when I noticed there have been precedents with Showroom taking down Nogizaka's audition videos.

Once again, I have to wonder if there's some issues concerning the privacy of candidates, since we're talking about private citizens and not public celebrities (in which case some degree of "fair use" of their image is allowed).
Normally, I'd say it'd be wiser for people to delete these audition SRs, but this 3rd Draft is a special case in that fans are involved in the selection process, so keeping the videos circulating is a "necessary evil" that must be perpetrated to spread knowledge of the candidates. What a conundrum.