MySpace at risk of a Kazaa like Plunge?

As with P2P file sharing giants Napster and Kazaa, MySpace is now under attack from Universal Music Group for breach of copyright laws. Universal claims that MySpace "encourages, facilitates and participates in the unauthorised reproduction, adaptation, distribution and public performance" of material it isn’t legally entitled to.

This is the latest development in the file sharing debacle as online video site Youtube was under attack in September this year, however were able to avoid the court room through reaching a licensing agreement with music giant Universal. Current actions taken by MySpace to remove copyrighted content have included flagging copyrighted material and removing it, MySpace have also recently installed "audio fingerprinting" technology to block users from uploading copyrighted content to the site.

Universal however are not letting go like they did with Youtube, they were unable to come to a licensing agreement and their claim stands for unspecified damages and up to US$150 000 for each unauthorised music video or song found on the website.

With the growing regularity of lawsuits like these, companies like Universal may have to look at alternate methods of protecting their content or reviewing licensing practices as it is evident that file sharing is not going to just go away.