DivX Sues Universal, Veoh Backlash?

Written by A. L. Friedman

Friday, September 7. 2007 at 11:03 AM EDT Post a comment

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Yesterday afternoon, video technology company DivX filed a suit against Universal Music Group on behalf of its video sharing site, Stage6, seeking a confirmation that the site is fully DMCA-compliant. DivX's suit was in response to legal threats from UMG.

If this sounds familiar it's because Veoh did the exact same thing about a month ago. And it didn't really accomplish much, as Universal sicced its lawyers on the San Diego-based company just yesterday.

In response to the suit, Universal issued the following statement:

Universal Music Group has been in negotiations with DivX and recently offered them a deal that would address the rampant copyright infringement occurring on their service and fairly compensate our artists and songwriters for the use of their audiovisual works. Universal is committed to supporting innovative new digital services, as evidenced by our deals with YouTube and others. However, DivX has nothing to do with innovation. Their Stage6 service directly violates the rights of content creators. DivX’s purpose is to build traffic and sell advertising off of unlicensed content that is clearly illegal. They are perpetuating a disservice to the entire creative community.

A source at the label also told me that the two sides were actually scheduled to meet on Tuesday to set up the standard type of video streaming deal that Universal has with YouTube, among other sites. So what happened? Could it have something to do with the announcement of the lawsuit against Veoh?

Calls to DivX were not returned, but stay tuned.