RSSUniversal Sues Two Video Sharing Sites
By Ed Oswald | Published October 17, 2006, 2:40 PM
Universal said it had filed suit against two video sites, announcing legal action against Grouper and Bolt.com Tuesday for hosting pirated versions of its videos. The label is seeking $150,000 per occurrence of copyright infringement, expected to be in the thousands.
Both lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They allege that Bolt and Grouper actively participate in the infringement by copying, formatting and distributing material from Universal artists.
Sony Pictures bought Grouper back in August. As the legal owner of the site, the movie studio may now be dragged into the suit as Universal threatened to add it as a defendant. Universal was not available for comment.
In the suit, Universal claimed that Grouper used copyright infringement to become "one of the most prominent and valuable Web sites on the Internet."
Bolt is independently held by Bolt Media. Neither Bolt nor Grouper was available for comment as of press time. Grouper sees about 2 million monthly visitors a month, while Bolt has about 8 million visitors a month. However, both sites pale in comparison to YouTube, which sees about 72 million visitors each month, according to comScore figures.
In North America, Universal counts some of the hottest pop acts in its roster. They include the Black Eyed Peas, Mariah Carey, Eminem, Gwen Stefani, and Kanye West.
"Grouper sees about 2 million monthly visitors a month,"
ya dont say?
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now that s.h.i.t is FUNNY!!
So basicly Sony is stealing from Universal by owning the Grouper site...
Let them sue the hell out of each other... It fun watching corporations go down in flames..
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"Grouper sees about 2 million monthly visitors a month..."
haha redundancy is funny
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"Sony Pictures bought Grouper back in August ..."
LOL .... One more nail for the coffin of the reputation and future reputation of sony.
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Of course Universal is trying to set precedent, to do so against an entity that has means to defend itself on par with Universal wouldn't be strategically sound. Fair, but not strategically sound.
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No, I would assume that they're threatening Sony first to get them to repudiate their purchase and not allow any of the Big 5 to "turn a blind eye."
Some people are more scared of the inevitable dilution of their business model than others.
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