Universal Music to sue YouTube?

Found on MediaPost:

"(...)Speaking at a Merrill Lynch conference Tuesday, Universal Music CEO Doug Morris complained that YouTube and MySpace owed Universal "tens of millions of dollars" for copyright infringement.  Universal is in negotiations with the sites, but indicated yesterday that it will sue should talks fall through. "This could be the first salvo from a content player against business models based on user-generated content, much of which relies on copyrighted material," wrote Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen in a report about the conference. Morris's remarks, she wrote, "strongly suggested the company was planning to take legal action in the near-term to either prevent the illegal use of their content on these Web sites or to ensure the company is compensated for the use of its content."

The company's main concern appears to be the MTV-style music videos that users have uploaded to the site. Universal makes a limited number of these types of clips available for free streaming at AOL and Yahoo, but the portals pay a licensing fee. YouTube and MySpace, by contrast, have no agreement with the major labels to allow them to stream music videos. But the sites also don't post the content themselves; rather they rely on users to post it.

(...) Coincidentally, Morris vented about YouTube at the same time that NBC exec Randy Falco was likewise complaining about the video sharing site. "When 'Saturday Night Live' had a great clip of 'Lazy Sunday,' YouTube made a lot of money off it," Falco said Tuesday at a press conference, announcing the new broadband venture NBBC. "In the future, when we have a 'Lazy Sunday' clip, NBBC will make a lot of money on it." "