Top iPad Music Apps (a/o February 8th):
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EMI Music has now joined the legal battle against Seeqpod, a company that dances in a gray legal area. The lawsuit follows an earlier action against the company by Warner Music Group, a filing that dates back to January of 2008. Both major label groups allege that Seeqpod illegally sources copyrighted content within its service, one that assembles virtual playlists using the vast and chaotic collection of web-hosted content.
But EMI is taking the matter further. The company is naming names, and directing its legal firepower against chief executive Kazian Franks and investors Raf Podowski and Shekhar Lodha, all of whom have been named as defendants. That is similar to a recent legal attack by EMI directly against Michael Robertson, head of mp3tunes.com and sideload.com. "They've moved from a 12-gauge to an 8-gauge shotgun, spraying bullets in an ever wider path to take out even more victims," Robertson recently blogged.
That
'wider path' also includes FavTape, an application based partly on the
Seeqpod API (application programming interface). FavTape was created
by Ryan Sit, who actually offered to switch the Seeqpod API over the
YouTube, according to Robertson. "EMI is broadening their legal attack
to include users of APIs," Robertson told Digital Music News. "It's an
outrageous affront to how the net works."
Seeqpod claims that its service is legal because it merely accesses material from around the web for on-demand streaming. That argument holds some water, though it remains unclear if the group will ultimately finalize its legal defense. In similar situations, companies frequently settle out-of-court, and strike some sort of licensing deal with the majors. Indeed, Seeqpod has publicly expressed an interest in hammering out an agreement with the majors, though that could require serious structural changes and major upfront payments.
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