Universal Music Group sues MySpace over copyrights

Business & Economy Forum

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Universal Music Group late Friday sued News Corp.'s MySpace unit, alleging the social networking site has allowed its users to post millions of Universal's songs and videos onto the Internet in violation of copyright law.
The lawsuit alleges that MySpace encourages copyright infringement by taking proactive measures such as reformatting music to better suit Web browsers and offering means to share the material with others.
MySpace "harbors no illusions" that countless users have uploaded bootlegged videos and music to its Web site, the suit alleges.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, seeks damages of $150,000 per song or video posted to the collection of Web sites, and identifies 60 alleged copyright violations. Moreover, UMG estimates there are tens of millions of songs and videos presently on MySpace pages that may infringe its copyrights.
Aside from damages, the suit also seeks an injunction to keep MySpace from distributing copyright-infringing material. Universal Music Group is a unit of media giant Vivendi Universal.
"Businesses that seek to trade off on our content, and the hard work of our artists and songwriters, shouldn't be free to do so without permission and without fairly compensating the content creators," said UMG spokesman Peter Lofrumento. "Our goal is not to inhibit the creation of these communities, but to ensure that our rights and those of our artists are recognized," Lofrumento said.
The named defendants are MySpace and owner News Corp. The litigation comes after months of negotiations between the two sides, and about two weeks after MySpace switched on new technology in order to identify copyright material people try to upload.
The UMG litigation highlights the tensions between major entertainment companies and sites like MySpace and YouTube, which Google Inc. recently purchased for $1.65 billion, that allow users to freely-upload content. As a result of the freewheeling upload policies, the sites are usually rife with bootlegged material, as even their owners admit.
YouTube is facing a legal claim in France from a documentary film maker whose work appeared briefly on YouTube in July.
Yet MySpace, YouTube and other sites believe they are shielded from such legal claims by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was created to keep Internet service providers from being held responsible for copyright material their subscribers might disseminate.
The DMCA has since been adopted as a defense in most major copyright cases involving Internet entities.
On Friday, MySpace called the U.S. District Court lawsuit "unnecessary and meritless" and said it doesn't encourage or condone copyright violation.
"We are in full compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and have no doubt we will prevail in court," a spokesman for the social networking Web site said in a statement.
"Moreover, we proactively take steps to filter unauthorized music sound recordings and have implemented audio fingerprinting technology. We will continue working to be the gold standard in protecting creators' rights as well as the world's leading lifestyle portal."
Ben Charny is a MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco.

Music companies are so greedy, isn't the sharing of music through MySpace a good thing? It gets the artist's work out there.

You would think so. There are garage bands... and many unknowns, on myspace, who have been found, because of myspace. It's a good thing, in my opinion.

I can't stand how they pretend as if they're sticking up for the artists. As soon as they could these guys are trying to give the artist as little as possible when it comes to album sales. Then when an artist goes bankrupt, they say, "Well that was unfortunate." I have absolutely no respect for the music and movie industry in the way they pretend they're there for the little guy.

They pay an actor $20 million to do a film, but then pawn off the key grip as hurting because someone downloaded a movie. They talk about the struggling song writer, but just as soon work tooth and nail to only pay them $0.02 per record sale. When you do something so two-faced I will always ignore the cries of wolf.

Any exposure helps the artist, it's only the ad campaigns to generate album sales that helps the company, they really couldn't care less about the artist's fan base unless they're making top dollar from it.

That being said, I buy the products of everyone I support, so don't brand me as an apologist for piracy (which I don't even think this case is about).

you know, its because of myspace's videos and posting of music that a lot of those bands made any monies at all.
there's a few bands out there i wouldn't have ever heard had i not stumbled across them on youtube or myspace or whatever. because some do not get radio play what so ever


"The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, seeks damages of $150,000 per song or video posted to the collection of Web sites, and identifies 60 alleged copyright violations"

that is outragous. they lost no money on the videos - the play on mtv. lets think about this...

It's Universal Music Group v News Corp. Who cares who wins? No one is forcing bands to sign up to the major labels. The day musicians ditch companies like Universal and start selling their own music on the net (and making more money out of the sale) the better it will be for all of us, and we won't have to listen to these Whinging music execs another minute.