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Saturday, September 16, 2006

Universal prepares for a fight

If the economics of unicasting are not difficult enough for YouTube to overcome, a bigger beast and cost is about to threaten their business model: the music industry lawyers.

Universal, the biggest beast in the music jungle claim “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars...” If YouTube was the only company being threatened life might become terminal for the popular service, however Universal is also going after MySpace which adds a completely new dimension to the fight. I’d buy a front row seat to see Murdoch v Morris (CEO Universal) and my money would be on Murdoch – the situation is nowhere near as clear cut as the Universal CEO is making out. After all I’m sure most of the Universal Artists are loading content onto MySpace and really this is who Universal should be suing: Universal is already suing its’ customers, why not sue its’ suppliers as well?

Litigation is inevitable end product of any industry run by lawyers and the music industry is run by lawyers with big ego’s.