Probably not, but it seems like they may be facing a major financial setback in the future.
The Universal Music Group (UMG), enraged at seeing their content being displayed on MySpace and YouTube have decided to go after the services themselves by demanding royalty fees or forcing them to police their own domains.
(Reuters) “The poster child for (user-generated media) sites are MySpace and YouTube,” said [Universal chief executive Doug] Morris, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters. “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.”
He added, “How we deal with these companies will be revealed shortly.”
Although both MySpace and YouTube remove copy righted materials displayed on their site upon request, they do not actively police the items themselves. This has caused much frustration with UMG who seems to be getting weary of patroling both of these services to make sure their content is not displayed online.
Despite the fact that UMG has the right to make sure it receives compensation for use of its work, they seem to be asking the impossible of both MySpace and YouTube.
YouTube and MySpace probably lack the staff to actively patrol their own servers, and it is doubtful that they could moniter the activities of tens of millions of users who actively use their sites.
UMG earnings have been suffering lately from piracy of its content, and this latest move seems more of a way for them to make up for lost dollars rather than working to ensure that its content is not displayed online.
(Hat Tip: ZDnet.com)
