Can you say anything nice about Universal Music?

Can you say anything nice about Universal Music?

Charles Arthur

Thursday November 23, 2006

The Guardian

Why, will they sue us if we don't? Hang on, though - the record label does seem to have acquired a habit of late of firing off lawsuits in every direction. Last Friday, it sued MySpace, claiming that the site "encourages" people to upload songs and videos, breaking copyright as they do so. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns the site, has "turned MySpace Videos into a vast virtual warehouse for pirated copies of music videos and songs", Universal's lawyers alleged as they sought damages of $150,000 (£79,000) per song or video posted, and cited 60 alleged violations. If it succeeds, that's $9m - not a bad return on a day's surfing.

On Tuesday, the lawyers were back again with another suit against MySpace, this time over the leaking there of Jay-Z's upcoming album.

In September, Universal's chief executive Doug Morris let fly at YouTube (along with MySpace), claiming that copyright infringement there meant it owed "millions of dollars" for hosting music videos. Then earlier this week, Bank of America got a cease-and-desist letter from, yes, Universal over a video (posted on, yes, YouTube, via stereogum.com) in which an employee sang a version of U2's "One", but with altered lyrics to celebrate (we think that's the word) its acquisition of MBNA.

Is it just us, or does it sound like Universal's lawyers spend their days surfing social sites asking each other, "Hey, is that one of our songs?"

Universal, you'll recall, was the company which dallied on licensing its music to Microsoft for the new Zune player until the software giant agreed to pay a levy of $1 per player. Why? Because, said Morris this month: "These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it." (We're not sure which "they" he meant: the owners or the vendors of players.)

Clearly, it's a tough life running the world's biggest music company. But for those struggling artists on its books, there's some recompense: they'll get half of the $1 from each Zune sale. We guess the lawyers get the rest. After all, with all this surfing, their monitors must be nearly worn out.