Universal Media Group filed a lawsuit against MySpace last week after site users allegedly leaked rapper Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come album prior to its Nov. 21 release date, claiming the website violated copyright laws with its video and song-sharing features — a complaint the industry has recently brought with many filesharing services.

According to a Nov. 17 Associated Press article, the lawsuit claims MySpace “encourages, facilitates and participates in the unauthorized reproduction, adaptation [and] distribution” of copyrighted works. The lawsuit further accuses MySpace of “knowingly and intentionally operat[ing] its business on the fiction that it has obtained the licenses it needs to exist from members that MySpace well knows are not the true copyright owners.”

Proponents of hosting music on MySpace, a public website that allows signed and unsigned bands to share their music, say the site has given many independent artists a venue to share their work and network with other bands.

“MySpace has brought about a new sense of unity in terms of local music,” said Alex Holmes, guitarist of the independent Boston-based band Cut Down the Tall Trees. “Bands can use it to make friends with other acts, or promote their own. Since we’ve started using [MySpace], there has been somewhat of a local revival in terms of people that come out to shows.”

Holmes said he found Universal’s lawsuit unnecessary, pointing out that MySpace does not allow users to download full albums.

“MySpace isn’t really a threat, considering that most artists have their own official pages,” he said.

College of Arts and Sciences junior Charlie Geyer, who sings for the independent band Eighty-Six, said he does not feel threatened by the lawsuit against MySpace, adding it would have little effect on unsigned bands.

“MySpace is a great networking tool, and it would be too bad if it had to stop streaming audio, but it’s nothing special,” he said. “Whether or not MySpace lets people listen to bands for free, people are going to do it. There are a million other websites out there offering the same service.”

The prevalence of Internet filesharing has caused the industry to refocus the target of its lawsuits from private users to larger intermediaries in attempt to curb illegal downloading, said Boston University Law School professor Tamar Frankel.

“What in effect the court has done is move from those who actually post the copyrighted material without paying . . . to those who facilitate it for benefit,” she said.

Frankel said while suing facilitating websites was a logical step for the recording industry, the process of finding the site responsible for copyright infringement is still problematic.

“The fight is that the Internet distributes to millions of people,” she said, “and [publishers] want to collect from these millions of people.”

With music increasingly available on the Internet, copyright infringement issues have gained prevalence because of “the ease with which works can be copied and distributed worldwide and the almost perfect quality of digital copies,” BU School of Law professor Robert Bone said in an email.

Content providers attempt to limit illegal downloading by offering alternatives, like iTunes and by relying on lawsuits to close illegal intermediaries, including Napster and Grokster.

“Many people argue that suing for infringement could chill socially valuable uses of the Internet,” he said. “These folks think that the content providers should think harder about alternative business models that promise enough economic return but still leave ample room for creative, socially valuable uses of the Internet.”

The Internet’s role in sharing copyrighted materials will most likely be reassessed as new technology is introduced in the future, Bone said.

“This is not a new issue,” BU School of Law professor Mike Meurer said in an email. “Photocopy shops have been sued because they have helped people make infringing copies of book chapters and academic articles.”

Meurer cited Aimster, Grokster and Napster as sites shut down for “facilitating filesharing.” However, he said currently endangered sites, including MySpace and YouTube, may be able to avoid similar lawsuits.

“They will probably prevail in a copyright suit if they reasonably monitor their service and discourage uploading of infringing files and respond to requests by copyright owners to take down infringing files,” he said.