More litigation. The Universal Music Group yesterday launched lawsuits against two video sharing websites accusing them of violating their copyrights. Grouper.com and Bolt.com both offer services similar to that of YouTube, where members can upload their own videos to share with other people. However, just like YouTube, a lot of members actually upload other people's videos, including many pop videos, without the permission of the people who own that content.
As previously reported, Universal chief Doug Morris recently indicated that he was considering suing YouTube, the highest profile video sharing website, over this very issue, but last week, just ahead of Google's takeover of the site, it was confirmed the major had reached a licensing deal with YouTube bosses to cover the use of their content.
Universal says that is has offered both Grouper.com and Bolt.com similar licensing deals, but that no agreement has been reached with either company, hence the lawsuits. The legal papers, filed at the LA District Court on Monday, alleges that both Grouper and Bolt are guilty of copyright violation by "copying, reformatting, distributing and creating" works derived from music videos and songs owned by the label.
The two defendants are yet to formally respond, though Bolt have posted a message on their home page which reads: "We have been notified today that Universal Music has filed a lawsuit against Bolt because our members upload videos which may contain their musicians' copyrighted videos. We understand the love you have for your favorite musical artists, but Bolt respects the rights of copyright owners such as Universal Music and their artists, and we ask that you please do so as well by not uploading their videos to Bolt. You can still watch your favorite music videos by visiting your favorite bands websites. Bear with us - we hope to sort this out soon!"
That message indicates that Bolt are keen to position themselves as the innocent party in this - ie "we don't upload copyright content ourselves, we don't encourage our members to, we remove copyright content if it is brought to our attention, therefore we are not liable". Such a defence is akin to the Betamax plea used for a long time by the makers of P2P software - ie "we can't be held responsible if people use our legitimate software for illegitimate purposes".
Of course, that plea was ultimately unsuccessful in the landmark MGM v Grokster ruling in the US, though the video sharing companies may be on stronger ground because [a] they have not been so blatant in implying their systems should be used for illegal sharing and [b] when content owners alert them, they will remove copyrighted tracks from their network which means users who have been consuming it illegally no longer can (whereas even if a P2P network subsequently blocked a track, everyone who'd downloaded it before that point had a copy for keeps).
Nevertheless, putting the responsibility of policing its network onto the content owners hardly seems fair, so it would be interesting to see if such a defence would stand up in court. However, more than likely it won't reach that point because the video sharing sites won't want to remove the copyright content from their libraries because without it they are unlikely to be able to compete with YouTube - which means, ultimately, they will have to do the kind of licensing deals currently being negotiated by their larger rival, assuming they can afford to.
Meanwhile, although the lawsuits currently target Grouper Networks Inc and Bolt Inc, Universal says it is considering adding Sony Corp's Sony Pictures Entertainment into the action, because they acquired Grouper back in August.