Squabble over music posting

Some talk is starting to percolate in the music/media world about litigation against YouTube and MySpace over the posting of copyrighted clips. The sites themselves are not posting the stuff - it's users who are uploading the MTV-style material. The music labels make these clips available to AOL and Yahoo for streaming, but for a licensing fee. YouTube and MySpace have no such arrangement with the major labels. At Merrill Lynch's media industry conference this week, Universal Music CEO Doug Morris hinted that there might be legal action taken - and soon - to stop the copright infringers, according to Merrill analyst Jessica Reif Cohen (he claimes the sites owe Universal tens of millions of dollars). "This could be the first salvo from a content player against business models based on user-generated content, much of which relies on copyrighted material," Cohen wrote. The possibilities are even more delicious since Universal would be duking it out against News Corp., which owns MySpace. MediaPost NYT