Class-Action Lawsuit Against Google/YouTube Growing

YouTube's getting in hotter and hotter water. The class-action lawsuit I mentioned earlier is growing. Essentially, the intellectual property environment's a little more complex than I've seen mentioned before:

Unlike the music labels such as Universal and EMI, which own copyrights to specific recordings of songs, the NMPA owns copyrights to music lyrics and specific melodies. Media companies that wish to use music usually have to obtain licenses from both the music label and the NMPA, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal —something that YouTube has not done when forming agreements with the four major labels to use their music on the site in exchange for a cut of ad revenue.

And being a class-action suit, merely settling out of court will be a little more difficult. Each party's going to have their own agenda.

This does nothing but strengthen my believe that Google is a bit cavalier in how it approaches intellectual property, and that this is going to cost them.