Universal Sues Myspace
Posted November 17, 2006 — in Music News
Universal Music Group is sueing Myspace for copyright infringement.
The owners of the site have “made infringement free and easy, turning MySpace videos into a vast virtual warehouse for pirated copies of music videos and songs,” the complaint says. They use “extensive efforts to encourage members to upload pirated videos to MySpace servers.” The site reportedly has more than 50 million unique visitors per month and more than 200,000 new registrations each day.
The complaint includes an example of a MySpace page showing a pirated video of “Beautiful Day” by UMG artist U2. It was viewed more than 2,000 times according to the site, the suit says.
“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,” a UMPG spokesperson said in a statement. “Our music and videos play a key role in building the communities that have created hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the owners of MySpace. Our goal is not to inhibit the creation of these communities, but to ensure that our rights and those of our artists are recognized.”
The suit, filed in the federal District Court in Los Angeles, includes claims for direct copyright infringement, secondary copyright infringement and deceptive business practices.
ugh.
universal just wont give up.
personally, i don’t see what the big deal with having your music video on the biggest site on the net is.
Thats extra exposure really.
For a visual person like me, videos will actually sell a song for me and my biggest source for finding these videos are myspace and youtube, both which are having complaints left and right.
Eliminate those and i don’t see videos and that lowers sales by at least 1.
Comment by Andy — November 18, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
I wish the record companies would quit complaining and embrace the technology. They fought music downloads for awhile and finally realized that is what the public wanted. They need to be more accepting of the technology that’s out there and be glad someone cares enough to post one of their music videos or songs. It’s just frustrating to see them go against the flow. They are only hurting themselves in the long run.
Comment by Greg — November 19, 2006 @ 4:08 am
Why is it that record companies want royalty payments for FREE ADVERTISING of their products?? IE the music and musicians?? Imagine that ! Free marketing and free advertising. No wonder the industry labels are loosing out, they are SO short sighted and this is the PERFECT example of that short sightedness.
Comment by Musician — November 20, 2006 @ 2:04 am
Money, people…money. That’s all it’s fueled by. They’re not looking at it as “free advertisement.” They’re looking at it as “lost royalties for plays @ 2000+ per day.”
Comment by Scott — November 20, 2006 @ 8:43 am
if this kind of litigation goes on, what is next? Cover bands paying royalties for playing the music or the listener paying royalties for listening?
Hell why dont we charge people $X for an artists CD then charge them $Y for each time they listen or play the CD on their stereos and $Z per person actually hearing the played music.
This is getting out of control.
Comment by Another Musician — November 20, 2006 @ 4:49 pm