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Bolt from the blue dives into the red

Bolt from the blue dives into the red

US-based Bolt.com, one of the Internet’s oldest and most influential video-sharing sites, has permanently closed following a protracted legal dispute with Universal Music Group.

Founded in 1996, Bolt.com can lay claim to being one of the first mainstream, information-sharing online communities. At its most popular, Bolt attracted up to 13 million visitors each month – a figure that helped it secure sponsorship deals with household names such as the hamburger chain, Wendy’s.

In October 2006, however, Universal Music sought unspecified damages for copyright infringement and $150,000 per infraction, after their copyrighted material was uploaded onto the site without consent.

To pay for the settlement, Bolt.com offered cash, stock and advertising revenue to Universal, agreeing to sell itself to rival GoFish and meet all future royalty payments. The firms settled in February 2007 and a month later Universal agreed to drop the lawsuit for a $10 million settlement. Unfortunately, the deal between Bolt.com and GoFish collapsed in early August and this week Bolt.com closed its doors for good.

Unlike more ‘secure’ community web sites such as MySpace and YouTube, (owned by News International and Google respectively) Bolt.com had no large investor to protect them.

At the same time it started proceedings against Bolt, Universal also successfully sued Grouper, alleging that the practice of transcoding video uploads represented participation in copyright violation. It tackled MySpace on the same grounds just one month later.

The fourth annual Digital Music Survey published in the UK in March 2007 discovered that 43% of those surveyed claimed that they are illegally downloading tracks, rising from 36% last year and 40% in 2005, costing the industry millions of pounds each year.

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