Universal Music Group and Bolt have settled claims that Bolt infringed UMG copyrights, as Bolt is being acquired by GoFish, which is already a UMG partner.

The terms: Cash from Bolt, plus:

Bolt has also agreed to introduce filtering technologies within the next 60 days ensuring that its users can no longer exploit the music and videos of UMG artists and songwriters without appropriate payment and consent.

See Grokster:

Finally, there is no evidence that either company made an effort to filter copyrighted material from users' downloads or otherwise impede the sharing of copyrighted files. Although Grokster appears to have sent e-mails warning users about infringing content when it received threatening notice from the copyright holders, it never blocked anyone from continuing to use its software to share copyrighted files. Id., at 75-76. StreamCast not only rejected another company's offer of help to monitor infringement, id., at 928-929, but blocked the Internet Protocol addresses of entities it believed were trying to engage in such monitoring on its networks, id., at 917-922. (Slip op. at 6)

[T}his evidence of unlawful objective is given added significance by MGM’s showing that neither company attempted to develop filtering tools or other mechanisms to diminish the infringing activity using their software. While the Ninth Circuit treated the defendants’ failure to develop such tools as irrelevant because they lacked an independent duty to monitor their users’ activity, we think this evidence underscores Grokster'’s and StreamCast’'s intentional facilitation of their users’' infringement. (Slip op. at 22)

posted by James DeLong @ 9:13 AM | DRM & Watermarks, etc.

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