This had to start sooner or later - lawsuits against video sharing sites for copyright violations etc. Many pundits have cited that before that YouTube is the most susceptible to such lawsuits being the most popular of online video sharing communities where countless numbers of copyrighted material are published for the public to view and/or share.
Just the day Google acquired YouTube, YouTube entered into a deal with Universal Music to keep itself off from getting entangled into such long and messy courtroom matches. However, it seems that other such online video sharing communities didn’t get the message as it showed today.
The news is that online video sharing site Grouper that was acquired by Sony recently and Bolt.com have come under Universal Music’s wrath. Universal Music has filed lawsuits against these two companies for hosting Universal Music’s copyrighted content that their users uploaded for viewing/sharing.
Well, the thing that has surprised many including myself is that Universal chose to sue two small such companies sparing the larger ones like Metacafe. Does this mean that Universal Music is testing waters here on how such cases might go for them? Or it could well be the fact that with this act, Universal Music is hoping that larger companies on getting the signal will come forward to sign lucrative deals with it.
Your guess is as good as mine here. Do let us know.
