VentureBeat

GoFish, a video-sharing site much like YouTube, has acquired another video site, Bolt, to save that company from lawsuits that threatened to sink it.

The $30 million transaction, first reported by the NYT, is reportedly being used by New York’s Bolt to pay a settlement of “several million dollars” to Universal Music Group, which had sued Bolt for copyright infringement. (See merger filing here)

Thus ends the topsy-turvy ride of Bolt, the company started in 1996 to target teenagers, and once backed by investors like Highland Capital, America Online, and Oak Investment with more than $66 million. It had even filed to go public in December 1999, with only $4 million in revenue and no profit — just as the dot-com meltdown began. It was forced to pull its IPO.

So co-founder and chief exec Aaron Cohen and co-founder Lou Kerner bought the company back from investors in 2004. Which is why Cohen tells the Times: “This deal is economically painful to Bolt shareholders…It is setting a precedent that companies that violate copyright at minimum risk litigation.”

Bolt apparently had revenue of $7 million by the end of last year. It had 5.3 million users in the U.S, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

GoFish, a two year old San Francisco company, went public last year through a reverse merger, so called because it merged with company that was already publicly traded but had no operations. GoFish has little, if any revenue, but has a market value of $134 million. GoFish.com had 1.4 million users in December.

Cohen and Bolt president Jay Gould are now involved with a project, called WikiYou, which has received seed funding from First Round Capital and Mayfield Fund, reports NewTeeVee.

MobiTV, the Emeryville start-up that offers TV and other digital content to your mobile phone and other connected devices, is soaking up the cash.

It has just raised $30 million more in its third round of venture capital, GigaOm reports. This make for a total of $100 million since July — and its valuation reportedly already exceeds $400 million.

Is this company red hot, or is it getting bloated? It started out serving mobile phones. But it has since expanded to support any device with broadband — via any WiFi, or with provider AT&T.

Large investors like Oak need to put their money to work, and so are willing to pay a high price. It has invested the most so far. The latest investors in MobiTV are Hearst Corp. and Adobe Systems. Hearst, of course, has all kinds of media properties, and it would make sense to distribute it over mobile phones and other gadgets. Adobe, meanwhile, is also flush with cash for ventures, having created a new venture arm. And Adobe, too, is interested in digital media distribution. It wants to support Apollo, its new system for running applications written in Flash, HTML, and JavaScript from the desktop.