MySpace Gets Sued!

The Universal Music Group has announced that they are suing MySpace. Incredible as it might seem, MySpace could be facing a ridiculously obsurd fine if found guilty of ‘encouraging users to illegally share music and music videos’. In the statement released by The Universal Music Group, they accuse MySpace of allowing people to illegally upload music and for providing the networking technology to share the content with others.

Evidently, Universal are doing it for the money, as there are plenty of worse offenders out there, who just couldn’t afford to pay. Universal also announced that the songs in question, the ones that they could be taking action against MySpace about include The Killers, Gwen Stefani and Jay-Z. MySpace, outraged at the accusitions, dismissed the statement as ‘meritless litigation’. It also noted that its procedures for clearing illegal content from the site were more than up to scratch and that ‘MySpace fully complies with international copyrighting laws’.

According to BBC News, MySpace made another statement in which they announced that they ‘have been keeping Universal closely appraised of our industry-leading efforts to protect creators’ rights’. MySpace ‘provides users with the tools to share their own work and do not induce, encourage or condone copyright violation in anyway’. This, in my opinion is complete madness. Obviously MySpace are trying their best, but have Universal gone too far suing them?

Universal don’t think so! They made yet another statement, in which they announced, ‘Our music and videos play a key role in building communites that have created hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the owners of MySpace’. There might be some truth in this, as MySpace was recently valued at $6 billion and Universal are obviously trying to squeeze what extra money they can out of this while they can.