Universal Music Sues MySpace 116
Grooves writes "Universal Music is suing MySpace for copyright infringement. Universal threatened to sue YouTube before the
Google acquisition was announced, so now it looks like they have moved on to the next target. Ars speculates that Universal is really after a piece of the action. 'On the morning of the
Google-YouTube deal, Universal — along with Sony BMG and CBS — signed
a licensing agreement with YouTube. If MySpace were to sign a similar agreement with the label, there is little doubt that the lawsuit would disappear.'"
How long before... (Score:1)
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KFG
Now (Score:1, Insightful)
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The fact that it happens everywhere makes it okay? A bunch of "myopic" IT people see a pattern as their/our minds are trained to do a
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See, that's where you go wrong, that network of tubes was invented by political types and put together by plumbers. Get real!
~;-)
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
Sayings - Deterred Bahamian Novel
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I wouldn't, however, expect plumbers to change our entire legal and political system any more than I would expect IT people to. Although with that being said, I've met several plumbers that are more in touch with the real world than most IT people could ever hope to be.
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Followed by...
Obviously you haven't met very many IT people. Most of the IT people I know would rather give up the toilet.
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Toilets are overrated.
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Won't catch Google by surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
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And bad karma, that ultimately leads to their early demise. The sooner the better.
MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:1)
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Myspace is owned by FOX. Studios suing studios never happens. They always strike a deal as it's the industry that needs to be protected. This is testing the legal system against Google, MS and Yahoo--new media poo-poos old media cause it's all about the co
Extortion (Score:5, Insightful)
This way, the "barriers to entry" can be set to any level the more powerful entity desires, so they can maintain their monopoly.
Smaller companies simply do not have the financial stamina to fend off litigation attacks like this.
The strongest ( most well funded ) entities will do well under such a system.
The rest of us... well... better do it in another country.
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Here's why it will never happen: http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/mems.asp [opensecrets.org]. If money buys influence--and it absolutely does--then what group has the most influence? That doesn't even account for the fact that most Congressmen and Congresswomen are lawyers themselves.
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Another option for those being sued might be to not base their revenue on copyright infringement and other obviously illegal practices. You make it sound like the only reason Universal is suing is because they have tons of money, which means they can make up their own laws. It may actually have to do with the fact that they actually have a case.
Re:Extortion (Score:4, Insightful)
This is more of the same - someone provides a tool, some people abuse the tool and do illegal things with it. Too many people to police means that the provider cannot afford to make sure everyone is acting within the law. But the people whose copyrights are being infringed upon can't afford to go after the individuals for both PR and practical reasons, so they look for someone with fat pockets to blame. Frankly I'm confused about what is so different about a tool on a web server somewhere and a tool on my hard drive - if I used Winamp to convert a copyrighted video and then uploaded it to a GoDaddy hosted server, nobody would be blaming Nullsoft or GoDaddy for my crime. It would be my fault, 100%. It is ridiculous that the courts continue to allow these types of suits to continue without any clarification as to what the law actually means when it comes to hosting user submitted content.
I've got to say, I really thought MySpace would be immune to this type of thing, as much as I'd love to see it implode. The fact is, they don't base their revenue model on infringement in the least. If you removed video hosting altogether from MySpace, I sincerely doubt if anyone would even notice, considering YouTube's success in that venue. It's looking more and more like the only safe user content to host is plain old text, and I think that's a damn shame. The record industry middlemen seem to feel that it's more than appropriate to expect everyone on the net to protect their copyrights as fiercely as they do.
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The difference is that MySpace actually generates revenue from advertisement - so they materially benefit when people perform copyright infringement using their tool, and can quite easily be shown to have a vested interest in not vigorously
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But using that argument, anyone that hosts ad-supported user content is screwed unless they have the time, staff, and knowledge to filter out every possible infringing item before it is publicly displayed (which is, needless to say, absolutely imposs
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I completely agree with this. Hopefully the court will be able to add some much needed nuance in how to deal with these cases. As you point out, it is important to determine to what degree of infringement is occurring. How much infringing material is being hosted here? Personally I don't know.
And you certainly summarized MySpace accurately here!
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http://musicians.opensrc.org/DrewRoberts [opensrc.org]
Some people are making works that should be safe to host. Fund the creation of more stuff with licenses you like and host those works.
You will get a positive feedback loop going and things may have a chance of being different.
Talk to your local bands about funding some of their songs under Free licenses.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/2 [ourmedia.org]
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How quaintly optimistic. I take it you didn't notice them threatening lyrics sites a while back, then?
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These are PUBLICALLY exposed words.
I wonder if I own a property, say a building, I also own copyright to any images taken of it? They are, indeed, hardcopy representations of MY building!
When I typed my first entry, I was still pissed upon reading that a patent for something I had been doing for quite some time had been issued. It seemed so damned obvious to me - as an analog engineer - to watch AC solenoid current to see if the solenoid "pulled in", and if there was something wr
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You are the first of a couple people who spoke of extortion. So, you get the reply. From m-w.com [m-w.com]:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but suing MySpace really means suing News Corp, their parent company. While I think the settlement issues with people are definitely suspect of extortion, when Universal is threatening to sue someone big and powerful like MySpace-News-Corp (which ought to at least have the backing of News Co
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That said, they obviously (to most of us) need to modify their business practices and change their business model to satisfy both their customers and their shareholders. If some of these executives got their heads out of their asses they might see they have fallen way behind the times. If they don't...things will continue the way they are for a while do
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I agree with your observation that business leaders must do whatever they can to protect the interests of their shareholders.
My primary concern is all this law is being passed which promotes useless litigation instead of productivity.
Economic races should be won by those who run the fastest, not by having our Government promoting one entity's success by encouraging his cleverness in tripping up his opponents. To me this is like telling the schoolkids that the first one
noooo (Score:1, Offtopic)
Oh PS3 launched today...
Universal Lawyers (Score:4, Funny)
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and the shakedown continues (Score:3, Insightful)
And the legalized extortion continues. I wouldn't care so much except that they also persist in extending copyright terms.
For the Love of God, Someone Go to Court! (Score:4, Insightful)
I really hate this crap. Small company does some innovation and becomes popular and the next thing you know, they're being sued by a multi-national corporation that's really just hoping the other company will settle the case so they can get a piece of the action.
I don't understand how MySpace would be liable for copyright infringment that's committed by users of the service. Doesn't MySpace classify as a common carrier? Of course no one ever goes to court to fight the big guys, *sigh*.
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Swi
Isn't it obvious? (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot good vs evil decision (Score:3, Funny)
1. Small business = good, big business = bad
2. open source = good, proprietary = bad
3. rootkits = bad
4. suing people = bad
5. lots of patents = bad
6. internet related = good
7. given all above items are equal, put on wizard's cap and role 16-sided die for one party. If it is even they are good; odd is evil. first poster to declar
Your forgot something... (Score:2)
0. Microsoft = Bad
0.1 Apple = Good
0.2 SCO = Really Bad
0.3 IBM = depends on yesterday's barometric pressure in Terra Del Fuego
0.4 George Bush = So absolutely, completely friken bad that you just want to spit
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No. Myspace censors content all of the time. Although I hate the heavy handed tactics and extortion schemes of the *AA, MySpace couldn't possibly claim to be a common carrier.
MySpace terminates accounts of you post pornographic content. If they can police porno, they can't then claim to be unable to police copyrighted content.
LK
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Actually porn is copyrighted content itself, so they just selectively delete copyrighted content that contains nudity, and let the music videos stay.
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If someone produces their own pornographic imagery and releases it to the public domain...
Regardless, MySpace's willingness and ability to police one type of content belies any claim that they are powerless to regulate their users' content.
LK
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MySpace is not liable for unmonitored uploads done by its' users as long as it complies with takedown notices from copyright holders.
This is open and shut.
MySpace still however might settle with Universal, unfortunately.. preventing the precedent from being set.
Sigh, indeed.
They're liable because they're actively helping (Score:2)
Myspace isn't being sued because their users are pirating, but because they are actively assisting in that piracy by reformatting the music file for the user. That makes them a participant rather than just a carrier.
Whether this has legal merit is for a judge to decide, but from first glance of the article and the details in it, I think Myspace may actually be in some trouble here.
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No big surprise (Score:1)
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The hell they can't. That's exactly what they're trying to prevent.
KFG
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The radio? Amazon.com? BN.com? Jukebox? Listen to it at a friend's house? Listen to it at a record store listening kiosk? There are plenty of perfectly legit ways to try out songs before you buy them.
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But the bands can certainly choose not to release their material in a way that restricts distribution. If you're a garage band looking for attention, you've got every mechanism in the world to put that music out there in a way that will not, cannot, get anyone in trouble for spread
Sue Sue Sue (Score:2)
Sue Sue Sue, I love you!
More pertinent is once all these fat lazy dinosaurs finish with each other we will get some real entertainment and not another farcing sitcom.
I guess Google scares Universal, cowards.
MySpace, big piranha are after YOU!
You don't thing Google isn't getting into entertainment in a bigway do you? Got old news, they are...
Universal Music are getting Zune Money (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why so many people are lenient on MS, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and all that... MS have fooled many people, many times but some people associate anything bad said against them as coming from a zealot.
Personally I think their track record means they deserve to be thought of badly, they have to prove us wrong not the other way round.
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The fact is, most people are completely unaware of the track record regarding Microsoft's intellectual property claims. And, as for lenient, you have to be lenient when you're locked into a proprietary platform with increasingly steep costs for switching.
Most people dislike Windows. They dislike that its an insecure platform. They dislike that its hardware requirements seem to increase dramatically with every iteration. They dislike the fact that the install slows down over time to the point that a sys
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Actually, in many cases the equivalent hardware from Apple is cheaper than buying it from Dell these days.
The fact that Apple's software is better doesn't help all that much when you need to make a large upfront investment in hardware to get some potential benefit from the software.
But it makes a big difference in making judgements abou
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Just sue the Internet (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Just sue the Internet (Score:4, Funny)
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Al Gore doesn't have enough moola? ~;-) macaroni
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
A battle of equals (Score:4, Insightful)
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1. It's all 4 majors. UMG no more or less than the others.
2. I don't know how they bubble up... I just know that they are targeting the wrong people.
3. It's the RIAA's lawyers, not UMG's lawyers, who are involved, and it's not the lawyers that are controlling it, it's the RIAA. The lawyers on this case are attack dogs. They attack who they're told to attack, and don't stand up to their clients at all. Good lawyers don't just follow orders. These lawyers just follow orders. I don't know how they live with
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Monopoly by force? (Score:1)
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MySpace is owned by News Corp one of the largest media companies on the face of the planet.
There are no small companies or individuals involved in this lawsuit.
http://www.newscorp.com/investor/index.html [newscorp.com]
News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) had total assets as of June 30, 2006 of approximately US$57 billion and total annual revenues of approximately US$25 billion.
Myspace to russia with love (Score:3, Insightful)
Or elsewhere, where there is no copyright, enforcable one. Get a few of those Sun containers and ship them around the world.
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Furthermore, being a US-based (formerly Australian) company, moving the servers to Russia would probably not limit their legal liability.
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Good to hear from you. Give my love to your mother. - Dad
KFG
Sounds like a trend... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Heh (Score:1)
It is like Web-boom Accounting Practices, or Enron Math!
1. Do anything
2. Be sued
3. Lose money, adjust taxes
4. Sue
5. Profit
obCryptonomicon quote (Score:3, Interesting)
"And control us."
Extortion? You have no idea.... (Score:5, Funny)
MySpace: Hello?
Universal: MySpace? Nice website you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.
MySpace: What?
Universal: You could make this "problem" go away if you gave us a "donation." Otherwise, something bad is going to happen. Capiche?
circumvention of our legal system (Score:5, Interesting)
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Hmm, this sounds familiar. Novell and Microsoft, anyone?
What is especially interesting about this development is how the corporations in question circumvent not only the entire American judicial branch, but also the executive and legislative branches. M$ has remained largely untouched by the many antitrust lawsuits brought against them, at least here in America. And of course
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Specially when the little guy is poor. (Score:2)
Interesting thought. (Score:1)
PARADOX! (Score:3, Funny)
Are they suing MySpace or Newscorp? (Score:3)
Question (Score:2)
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That does it. (Score:2)
Plagiarism (Score:1)
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Safe haven? (Score:1)
NO doubt (Score:1)
If they enter a contract saying they won't be sued, they probably won't be? Legally, we call that a settlement, and you can't continue a suit once you've settled it.
Woops! (Score:1)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/17/2
Mod -1 for not paying attention.
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