After negotiations to get into a revenue-share agreement broke down, Universal Music Group has now brought up at copyright infringement lawsuit against News Corp., owners of widely popular MySpace.com. More specifically, UMG wants 150,000 big ones for each instance and an immediate injunction against the site.
As I mentioned back in my “If you Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em” feature on YouTube and Warner, revenue sharing is the only way to go for these record companies trying to get in on the user-generated content craze.
Universal does have a right to be mad - MySpace does have a lot of copyrighted content and their explosion has been facilitated by the personalization feature, which allows users to share protected music. UMG was equally mad at YouTube, before striking up a licensing agreement to show their videos on the site.
I don’t really like big business, but I’ve got to side with Universal on this one. Getting your just due for stuff you create is how it’s supposed to work. It was obvious that the network Napster owned back in its heyday was a blatant act of piracy encouragement… all in the name of building a brand. It sucks for us end users… but I’m assuming that we all like to get paid for the work we do and not watch others take the credit… and money.
