Vivendi Universal is the company that owned mp3.com, a flawed but popular site that once helped artists publish their music online. Vivendi recently sold the domain name to CNET and kept the rights to the music archives. Vivendi has since taken the music itself offline, and CNET has yet to do anything with the mp3.com domain.
Vivendi's behavior and lack of respect for the artist's work was baffling. Back in August, our favorite lawyer, Lawrence Lessig, recounts an exchange with MP3.com in which his staff suggested the Creative Commonslicense to Vivendi, and was soundly rebuffed. Seriously, this exchange has to be read to be believed. And since Vivendi is the same company that effectively killed off the pioneering EMusic, one must ask if this portends the way all music conglomerates will fight off new threats to their entrenched lines of business.