Universal Music Sues Video-Sharing Site

The company has accused Veoh of massive copyright infringement.

ByABC News
January 8, 2009, 1:37 AM

Sept. 5 -- Universal Music, the world's largest music company, filed suit in federal court Tuesday against Veoh Networks, a video- and file-sharing site, accusing it of massive copyright infringement that deprives the company and its artists of sales and royalties.

The Los Angeles federal court suit begins another chapter in the music and movie industries' long-running attempt to control unauthorized online sharing of copyright material.

Popular media-sharing sites such as YouTube, Veoh and Torrentspy sprang up after the lawsuits that devastated early music-swapping companies such as Napster and Kazaa.

Tuesday's lawsuit, which seeks millions in damages, accuses upstart Veoh of being "a massive copyright infringer that has built its business on the back of others' intellectual property."

Veoh, a video-sharing service financially backed by Time Warner and Michael Eisner, combines online uploading and sharing of video files (a la YouTube), with the ability to download files and share clips using peer-to-peer software.

Veoh "follows in the ignominious footsteps of other recent mass infringers such as Napster, Aimster, Kazaa and Morpheus, engaging in high-tech theft in the name of 'sharing,'" according to the suit.

The San Diego-based video-sharing service takes "mass infringement on the internet to a new and dangerous level by supplying the public with an integrated combination of services and tools that make infringement free, easy and profitable for Veoh," the lawsuit alleges.

The case blends elements of Viacom's March 13 lawsuit in New York federal court against Google's YouTube, and the music industry's just-concluded lawsuit against Napster.

Like Napster, the Veoh upstart has created and maintains a proprietary peer-to-peer network, according to the suit. Veoh's is called "Veohnet" and operates with free Veoh software, according to the suit.

The software "enables the 'sharing' and 'downloading' of copies of videos that are stored on the computers of other Veoh members who are part of Veoh's P2P network," the lawsuit claims.