Warner Music Group has filed suit in a California District Court against the social media service, Imeem, claiming that the website has infringed on the copyright of its artists. Warner is seeking compensation up to $150,000 for each copyright work infringed on Imeem.

Imeem, launched in October of 2004, is a social media service in which users socialize and share media content such as blogs, photos, music, and videos. The original service was distributed as a downloadable peer-to-peer network, but has since moved to the Internet where it has quickly acquired over 16 million users.

But Warner claims that Imeem’s success has been based around its lenience towards illegal music sharing of  artists such as Warner’s own AC/DC, Neil Young, Third Eye Blind, and Green Day.

Imeem operates by a user participation model, who maintains a set of community guidelines, user flagging of inappropriate content, and a notice-and-takedown policy.

In addition, Imeem recommends its users to respect copyright laws, and claims no responsibility for any infringing activities  in accordance with the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) of 1998.

The OCILLA is a U.S. federal law that provides a safe harbor to online service providers given that they take down content in a timely manner if someone alleges it infringes their copyrights.

This law could potentially clear Imeem if it was proven that the corporation had no actual knowledge of the material on its site. But Warner seems to think Imeem knew of this activity all along, and attributes its success to illegal file sharing.

“Imeem is no innocent infringer. It invites Imeem’s millions of users to flock to its website to copy, adapt, distribute and perform unlicensed sound recordings and music videos,” said Warner, in the lawsuit.

Warner is using Imeem’s own artists’ “play counts” as evidence against the social media network, claiming it knew illegal file sharing was present on the site, but simply neglected to take the appropriate actions against its users.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 2:30 pm under Legal.

Read more entries by George Gardner.
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