{"id":589,"date":"2006-11-17T23:11:07","date_gmt":"2006-11-18T06:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=589"},"modified":"2006-11-17T23:11:07","modified_gmt":"2006-11-18T06:11:07","slug":"universal_sues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=589","title":{"rendered":"Universal sues MySpace over “user-stolen” content"},"content":{"rendered":"

Push has come to shove. The world’s biggest record company, Universal Music Group, has filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against the world’s biggest social network, MySpace, and its owner, News Corp., charging them with complicity in the widespread “theft” of songs and videos, according to reports by MarketWatch<\/a> and Hollywood Reporter<\/a>. The suit accuses MySpace of operating a “vast virtual warehouse” of “user-stolen” content and asks for damages of up to $150,000 for each song and video.<\/p>\n

In a statement<\/a>, MySpace dismissed the suit as “unnecessary and meritless” and said it has “no doubt we will prevail in court.” It claims that it is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which shields Internet service providers from certain copyright violations committed by their users.<\/p>\n

Universal, however, appears set to argue that the DMCA protections do not apply in this case for two reasons: MySpace reformats files uploaded by its members, and it runs ads tailored to the user-uploaded songs and videos. For these reasons, it alleges, MySpace is not a passive network operator but rather is complicit in the copyright infringement and profits from it. Should the case go to trial, it could produce a landmark ruling with far-reaching implications for Internet media sites that rely on so-called user-generated content.<\/p>\n

Cynthia Brumfield, of IP & Democracy, says<\/a> the lawsuit “is probably a good thing. With two giants duking it out in the federal courts, the likelihood is good that some kind of legal precedent will be set. Maybe video file sharing sites (and other video-enabled Internet businesses) can finally get definitive legal ground rules, whatever they may be, providing a higher degree of certainty so that the industry can move forward.”<\/p>\n

That may be true, but it’s cold comfort to MySpace, which now finds itself in a dicey situation. Losing a trial could be disastrous, but if it makes a big payment to Universal to settle the suit, it will have many other copyright owners knocking at its door looking for similar payoffs. Although it’s unlikely that either party desires a long and costly trial, MySpace may well be following Grokster to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Push has come to shove. The world’s biggest record company, Universal Music Group, has filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against the world’s biggest social network, MySpace, and its owner, News Corp., charging them with complicity in the widespread “theft” of songs and videos, according to reports by MarketWatch and Hollywood Reporter. The suit accuses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}