The Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers or JASRAC might be pleased with YouTube’s latest response to the on going saga of copyright infringement. As reported on December 5 JASRAC had sent a letter to YouTube requesting that they improve their screening of copy written material and post warnings in Japanese about uploading such content. YouTube had until December 15 to respond.

Passively waiting for someone to point out that a hosted piece of content violates copyright is not the approach Japanese copyright holders want YouTube to take with uploaded videos.

MySpace said “hajime-mashite” (nice to meet you) to Japan today as the News Corp.-owned site teamed up for a 50/50 venture with Japanese telecom powerhouse Softbank Corp. to launch MySpace KK (MySpace Japan).

Copyright concerns expressed by a Japanese rights-holders group resulted in YouTube removing thousands of videos from the popular sharing site.

Nielsen//NetRatings tested its new online advertising measurement service, AdRelevance, by cutting it loose in the Japanese online sector. The results show that while ad spending is significant, there’s still plenty of room to grow.

Kai-Fu Lee and company now have new office space available to them in China. Meanwhile, Google has begun searching for more engineers in Japan to work on new mobile technologies.

Reuters reports that Google has opened up registration for Gmail in Japan.

Gimeru. That’s how they’re going to say it in Japan, to the excruciating annoyance of thousands of ex-patriot English teachers, harping again that its goo-guhl, not goo-goh, it’s jee-may-uhl, not jee-meh-roo.

The concept of “face” in Japan is an important one. Yahoo! Japan appears very committed to maintaining its business honor in the country by footing the bill for its auction site customers who ordered but never received jewelry from a defunct company.

If you’re a subscriber to Engadget or Gizmodo, or both, there’s a new gadget site to add to your reading list – CrunchGear.

Yahoo! continues to bank on social media and user-generated content as a means to capture eyeballs as the company officially launched its Trip Planner service today after months of beta testing.

Zorgloob writes that Google has launched an official Mexican company blog.

Google has just wrapped up a successful test for advertising via mobile phones in Japan, according to Bloomberg. The Japanese mobile phone market, more robust and advanced than the US market, is often used to test mobile technologies.

If Yahoo Japan’s most recent attempt at starting a joint venture and taking a position in an online bank succeeds, it could be a testing ground for establishing an online payment service.

Feedster will launch the Japanese version of its RSS and blog search engine soon, according to Feedster President Chris Redlitz. Feedster recently received funding to do so from Japanese investment firm Mitsui and Co., and the move will also help another future transition into the Chinese market by the end of the year at the earliest.

Japan’s government is a little jealous of the money being made by Google and plans to meet with 20 companies to discuss creating a rival search engine.

Technophile Japanese buyers of portable media players may have received a break as a government committee declined to support a proposed tax.

Pages on the Yahoo Japan web site will display wanted posters for five suspects sought by Japan’s National Police Agency.

The Japanese government will roll out mobile Voice over Internet Protocol and blazing 15Mbps connections by 2007.

The comparison site Become.com will take on Japan’s Transcosmos Corp as a partner in the battle for search and shopping Internet users.

Now here’s a good idea, and one that we may hope to see from Yahoo on the other side of the Pacific. Yahoo Japan Corp launched a pilot service allowing local users to update its map service to be sure its accurate, according to Kyodo News.