As expected, the Universal Music Group confirmed last week that it had reached an agreement with video sharing website Bolt.com, the YouTube style service it launched copyright violation proceedings against last year. According to a report in the Financial Times, the deal will see the major gain up to half the proceeds of the video sharing site's recent sale to rivals GoFish, as well as a royalty payment for all future sharing of the major's content via the Bolt.com platform, which seems rather generous, given it may as yet face similar action for the other majors, and won't have much left to offer them if they come knocking. Unless I'm failing to understand something crucial about the whole arrangement. Whatever. Bolt.com have pledged to have a tracking system in place within three months which will monitor the posting of Universal owned content on its site.
Confirming the deal with Bolt.com, and alluding to other similar ongoing litigation with other networking sites like Sony Corp owned Grouper and Murdoch's MySpace, Universal Music Group chief Doug Morris said in a statement last week: "While our preference is to work out similar arrangements with other user-generated sites so that we can bring our music to the widest possible audience, we will continue to be vigilant in protecting our rights and those of our artists and songwriters".