Universal Music Sues MySpace In Its Continuing Effort To Get Money From Everyone
from the took-'em-long-enough dept
Two months ago, Universal Music's chief Doug Morris publicly claimed that both YouTube and MySpace owed his company millions of dollars. That claim has been disputed by legal experts, but it scared YouTube and Google enough to hand over a bunch of money to Universal Music and others to sue some other sites while leaving them alone. It appears that MySpace didn't get the hint. So, today, just hours after MySpace announced a new tool to better allow content owners to pull content off the site, Universal Music has officially sued MySpace. As for how they get around the protections MySpace is afforded as a service provider, it appears they're claiming that by reformatting the videos to play on the site, they're taking a more proactive role in the copyright infringement. It seems like a long shot, as MySpace has some pretty clear defenses. Either way, Universal Music has really been on a tear lately, as it demands money from pretty much everyone. You've got the people who actually buy the music (of course), the sites that then help promote by using it in videos and, of course, he convinced Microsoft to give them a cut for every Zune sold. He's probably proud of himself for bringing in these new "lines" of revenue, but it seems like a strategy destined to fail. He's just made it a lot more expensive and difficult for anyone to promote his music -- meaning they'll gladly look for other options.
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Typo
BTW mike, typo "He's probably proud of himself for brining in these new"
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What's sad...
This law suit happens to be just because of the people that upload to MySpace's own video database, which converts the video on their servers to flash, hence 'participation' in the crime. I smell BS either way, and it's impossible to stop without severely hindering the use of MySpace. Should be fun to watch this play out!
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Myspace user
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major music labels
i say good riddance
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lots of indie music on myspace
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what i find amazing
It's fa-qing rediculous (sp?).
Listen UM, Myspace users posting your music on their "space" = FREE promotion. FREE promotion means somebody is likely to hear one of your songs and say, "Oh I like that, what album is that off of?" and when a user says that, it means that they are likely to go out and purchase the overpriced media from whence that song came. Further, MySpace also limits the number of songs a user can upload to four. There is no chance of uploading a full album to myspace music. and to myspace video, I am pretty sure that that is all covered by fair use.
Lay off the content providers UM.
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Re: what i find amazing
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Re: what i find amazing
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Re: Re: what i find amazing
aaaaaaaaaand I also just realized this is all from 2006 haha
google please tell my why you put this in the top search results when I was looking up something about itunes?
sillysillygoogle.
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myspace blows
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down with MySpace & News Corp.
MySpace sucks. Site never works the way it's suppose to when you want it to, design is horrible and so on and so on
Earlier this week it was announced MySpace is worth $6billion [no wonder UM is suing]. Any value the site has is because of us, the users.
This week, News Corp companies decided to published an new book by OJ Simpson - apparently his confession to the murder of his ex-wife. To top it off they thought it should also be a TV show as well.
The whole concept is vile to me. There's dozens of other music/social networking sites .....reverb nation, music hawk, my local band [i think], mp3.com is back and I know there's more I'm not thinking of
Let Myspace get sued, and then let it fall by the way side like so many other online properties that no one misses anymore as users find better designed and artist friendly sites.
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Microsoft is behind it
Microsoft wants in to the consumer electronics space in the worst way, but there's just one problem: Apple is already there and isn't about to surrender. And it's well-publicized that the music industry is very unhappy about Apple's refusal to raise prices on certain (popular) tracks on the iTunes Store.
So, the only way that either Universal or Microsoft can accomplish their goals is to collude with a partner in an effort to force Apple to either A. bend to their will, or B. lose its place as a dominant player in the music/media market.
It now appears that in each other, Microsoft and Universal had found suitably sleazy partner who're willing to screw anyone and everyone -- former PlaysForSure partners, competitors, consumers -- in pursuit of money, power and control.
Watch for this: in the upcoming year, there will be a mass marketing thrust by the music industry and Microsoft promoting Zune as the only safe, legal, RIAA-approved media playback device. There will be attack campaigns on iPod as fostering piracy. The DRM restrictions on the Zune will only get more ridiculous, because that's what the music industry wants. Microsoft, in exchange for its bribe money to Universal for each Zune sold, will get preferential treatment, more songs on Zune Marketplace, exclusive material, etc.
This all reeks of collusion.
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