UMG Sues Grooveshark ... Again

Fishing For Grooveshark

UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP has filed another copyright lawsuit against GROOVESHARK after it obtained e-mails and other records that show GROOVESHARK's leaders led an effort to post more than 100,000 pirated songs onto the music service, CNET reports. GROOVESHARK  has yet to comment

"[The business records of ESCAPE MEDIA GROUP, GROOVESHARK's parent company,] establish unequivocally that the sound recordings illegally copied by ESCAPE's executives and employees, include thousands of well-known sound recordings owned by UMG," UMG's lawyers wrote in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, "

GROOVESHARK previously contended that it is not liable for copyright violations committed by users because of the protections provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor. But that safe harbor only protects Internet service providers from liability for infringing acts committed by users. The law does not protect service providers from their own acts of infringement.

UMG has asked the court to issue a permanent injunction against GROOVESHARK, which if granted would shut the service down. The label is also seeking the maximum in monetary damages of $150,000 per infringing act. If at least 1,000 of UNIVERSAL's songs were infringed, the total in damages could be well into the hundreds of millions.

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