Two months ago, Universal Music Group Chairman Doug Morris charged YouTube and MySpace with infringing on the copyrights of his label's artists, saying they "owe us tens of millions of dollars" and hinting at forthcoming lawsuits.

UMG alleges that pirated U2 videos are widely available on MySpace.

The world's largest record company followed through on that threat today, filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against MySpace and its parent company, News Corp. The suit claims that MySpace allows its users to upload videos illegally and encourages that infringement by reformatting the videos to be played back or sent to others.

The filing indicates that licensing negotiations between the parties broke down. YouTube avoided UMG's legal wrath by inking a licensing deal just prior to its $1.65 billion acquisition by Google last month.

In the complaint, filed in the US District Court Central District of California, Western Division, UMG alleges that thousands of links to music from Universal's biggest artists, including U2, Jay-Z, and Gwen Stefani, are widely available on MySpace, even ahead of their release to music stores.

The owners of the site have "made infringement free and easy, turning MySpace videos into a vast virtual warehouse for pirated copies of music videos and songs," the complaint says. They use "extensive efforts to encourage members to upload pirated videos to MySpace servers."

The site reportedly has more than 50 million unique visitors per month and more than 200,000 new registrations each day. Universal estimated maximum statutory damages for each copyrighted work at $150,000.

The complaint includes an example of a MySpace page showing a pirated video of "Beautiful Day" by UMG artist U2. It was viewed more than 2,000 times according to the site, the suit says.

"Businesses that seek to trade off on our content, and the hard work of our artists and songwriters, shouldn't be free to do so without permission and without fairly compensating the content creators," Universal Music said in a statement.

In its own statement, MySpace dismissed the lawsuit as "meritless litigation," saying its procedures for removing illegal downloads lived up to laws protecting digital rights. The suit comes on the same day that MySpace announced plans for a new tool for copyright holders that would purportedly make it easier and faster to remove content they allege is unauthorized.

Last month Universal Music sued two smaller video-sharing sites, Sony Pictures Entertainment's Grouper and independent site Bolt.com.