Warner Music Group has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the social networking site Imeem, seeking both monetary damages and a court order to restrict all WMG music from the site.
In the filing, WMG claims Imeem has avoided using any kind of filtering or other technology to keep members from using its content, and that the company in fact actively facilitates copyright infringement.
“Imeem itself directly engages in much of the infringing conduct by duplicating, adapting, distributing and performing plaintiff’s works through imeem’s own servers,” writes UMG in the filing.
However Imeem in March inked a deal with SnoCap for content identification purposes. At the time, Imeem proposed to use SnoCap’s registry to let participating labels either block their songs from the service, or share in ad revenues in allowed. The company at the time said it would work with both major and independent labels to implement the content filtering program over the course of the current quarter.
The label is seeking $150,000 for each song and music video posted to the site.
Imeem launched in March 2006 and claims to have 16 million members. The service lets members share music, video and photo playlists with others similar to Last.fm. It warns members not to post copyrighted content, and has struck licensing deals with such labels as Virgin Records, Nettwerk Music Group, SubPop Records, Beggars Group and others.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, joins several high-profile lawsuits against other Web 2.0 companies — including Universal Music Group’s lawsuit against MySpace and Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube.
