If you guys don't mind I'm gonna go off on a rant here, It's New Years eve 2009 and I'm snowed in so I'm celebrating 2009 all alone and I'm bored:

I'm not a copyright lawyer, I don't understand a lot about intellectual property rights but I do believe that all artists and content creators should be paid for their work but please please explain to me how this following scenario makes any sense at all to anyone and how it benefits or hurts the the artist or TV broadcaster or their sponsors in any way.

My account which featured mostly short TV show clips of Hikki and some user created content ( which includes Hikki) gets completely disabled because I had a 2 minute clip from 2004 of Utaban show.
How and in what way am I stealing or profiting from the distribution of this small clip on the internet?

I'm not selling it, you CAN'T PURCHASE the episode ( go ahead and call the station and see, you can't)
So it's not as if I'm showing something illegally that can be bought legally like for example her concert or music videos.
The video is also pretty much lost in the archives somewhere in a TV vault room at NHK or whatever station and will never be seen again probably.

It's basically free publicity and advertising ( some of clips include small ad's on the screen) for the TV station, its sponsors and the artist.

Not only that, I lose all my information, subscriptions, favorites and friends that I will never get back.
Like I committed a crime and had all my stuff confiscated.

It is so utterly ridiculous what these greedy, uninformed and unenlightened corporations and companies will do to protect something that doesn't require to be protected.

The TV station isn't losing any money, the artist and record label doesn't lose anything and in return more people are likely to become fans, it will attract more people to go out and actually buy her CD's, DVD's etc. and everybody is happy.

Even Hikki made a post in blog once about a fan who had an awesome fan site and she said that she believed that some of her fans did more for promoting her then the people at her own company.
That speaks volumes.

With all the money and resources they spend tracking users and banning accounts they could be spending that money to maintain an awesome artist page with video clips, music videos and all kind of cool stuff and think of the new fans it will attract and revenue for the company and artist.

Look at Hikki's own EMI homepage, it sucks ( not Hikki's fault of course).

There's hardly any new or old content on there. Just little blurbs of updates here and there but that's it.
You tell me they can't do better then that?

They should hire fans Like RJ at Ublog and Sano at UtadaUnited to design and maintain the site's content.
People like Q and Soulhunter from here to moderate boards.

You can have live performances from her TV shows, include clips from past shows, give us some pictures from photo
shoots or magazines and such, create a music player function so people can sample and listen to ALL her music and provide direct links to where to buy it, include radio interviews, magazine articles, pictures, wallpapers, screensavers, user generated content, offer links to places where you can purchase the artists' music so we don't have a million people posting on Youtube saying: "Where can I buy her album or DVD?" on every single video clip.
Have an absolutely massive messageboard where all fans from all around the world can come together and talk and hang out, create fan mashups , remixes, drawings, games, translations and other types of cool stuff.
Provide a place where fans can buy tickets to upcoming events, concerts or TV appearences.

You can have everything in one central location, a Hikki Nirvana of sorts.

Make everything accessible.

Can you imagine how awesome a site like that would be?

Well I can, but it may be because I'm on my 4th sake and I'm bit tipsy at the moment and Youtube and those greedy corporations can kiss my ass.

Anyway....
With all that bandwidth at their disposal it would be not only an amazing site but people who are not even fans of her would want to check it out just because of the hype it will generates.

That's how you promote an artist in 21st century, not having them on CNN financial news at 4:30 in the morning.
or having a private concert where only 20 fans can show up,
What is all that garbage? This is the Information Age people and the internet is the key, use it!

An artist of Hikki's caliber deserves a special site for
her and her fans.

I should be working as Hikki's PR manager, LOL.

Happy 2009.


End of rant.