SeeqPod: If you can’t beat ‘em, multiply!
p2pnet news P2P | Music:- SeeqPod is a cool on-line search application, p2pnet posted little more than a year ago, going on:
“You enter an artist – here, Joni Mitchell – and almost instantly, up come videos and tunes.
“Neat. So now Warner Music Group is suing it, claiming it engages in ‘direct, contributory and vicarious infringement’.”
“The usual petty, mean-minded Big 4 BS which passes as a corporate business plan, in other word. According to Warner, Seeqpod is, “liable for making available on-demand and unauthorized digital public performances,” said Billboard, going on:
” ‘WMG also claims Seeqpod is using music to build up a large enough user base to start selling advertising, without compensating the label its use’.”
Warner is, of course, a paid-up member of the corporate music Mafia, Vivendi Universal, EMI and Sony Music being the other three gang members.
Their standard operating policy is: if it looks even vaguely like competition, or is in the slightest way innovative, stomp it.
SeeqPod fits the bill in both respects. So you can guess the rest.
However, the people behind it aren’t dummies and they’ve come up with a counter-plan.
Sell the source code.
Clever.
“Calling all Developers and Enterprise partners!” – the SeeqPod site says, continuing »»»
Get your own SeeqPod Targeted Crawling system with built in APIs. This offer is available for purchase to any interested. Why rely on the SeeqPod API when you can own one yourself, your very own SeeqPod!
Professional services including support on installation, customization, optimization and general support will be available. In addition, search, recommendation, discovery, contextual matching, playlisting and curation services are also available.
What’s the damage?
The SeeqPod Targeted Crawling System and search starts at $5,000.00 and, “includes a professional services support contract,” says the company.
Interested? Go to the site to pre-register, or »»»
SeeqPod, Inc.
6475 Christie Avenue Suite 475
Emeryville, CA 94608
Tel: (510) 597-1234
Fax: (510) 597-1920
podbin@seeqpod.com
Good luck, guys.
If you can’t beat ‘em, multiply. ;P
p2pnet – Warner Music goes after Seeqpod, January 24, 2008
Billboard – WMG Sues Music Search Site Seeqpod , January 23, 2008
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March 26th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
$5,000 !?!?!?
Does it come bundled with Adobe CS4 or something?!
Just seems a bit steep for, essentially, a software code.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
What gets me is a couple of things:
1. It’s common knowledge that opening a project (like, for example under GPL or one of the BSD licenses) ensures that it spreads like wildfire — at least in comparison to if you charge for it. The RIAA is already trying to destroy them — like they attempt to destroy anything even remotely innovative, so, to use the kind of capitalist-speak I usually don’t like: where’s the “financial incentive” for other folks to “buy” the API for their own projects?
2. Look at the growth of firefox add-ons etc: firefox (and it’s mutant offspring Iceweasel) don’t charge people for the “privilege” of working with their codebase or API, and as a result, the development of Firefox is really fast in comparison to closed-source efforts like IE. If they really want to checkmate the RIAA’s efforts in this direction, GPL’ing the code would probably lead to a mess of startups: more versions makes the thing harder to kill.
3. They’re already getting sued, and look at the big deal the prosecution tried to make about the ads on TPB? They attempted to paint TPB as some kind of extremely commercialized thing that it wasn’t, simply because of a few ads.
Now you get Seeqpod selling/licensing their API at 5 grand a pop: It’s not going to be very difficult to spin that as a money-grab, which can easily be reinterpreted into “well, it’s obviously a seriously commercial site, so we’ll gouge them for millions.”
Actually this isn’t that clever of an idea: GPL’ing the codebase (or directly ceding it to the public domain outright) would go a lot further toward ensuring that even if they beat Seeqpod, another crop of ‘pods grows in it’s place.
Restricting that to folks with 5 grand to blow just strikes me as….counterintuitive.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
They should give it away for free, and then offer support for a fee. That’d be the fastest way- hell, i’d throw up a seeqpod thing on my server, just for the heck of it, not that i intend to make anything off it, but just so that corporate america can burn in hell
March 26th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I can’t picture there being a big demand for this, who wants to cough up $5000.00 for source code that if implemented is guaranteed to get you sued by the RIAA?
BTW Devil, software can go for much more than 5K, the company I work for sells theirs for around 100K, sometimes more depending on who it’s sold to and what services they get with it.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
@ Henry:
You’re right in general terms, but they’ve certainly generated some valuable PR for the sale.
SeeqPod is ‘branded’ and I’ll bet they won’t be turning down offers.
Cheers!
March 26th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
@Monkey:
“BTW Devil, software can go for much more than 5K, the company I work for sells theirs for around 100K…”
I’m aware of what software can go for.
I just don’t think this particular code is worth 5 Grand, as it could not possibly be very complex.
And, as Henry mentioned as well the vultures will be out there waiting to sue everyone who adopts it.
@Jon:
“SeeqPod is ‘branded’ and I’ll bet they won’t be turning down offers.”
What would be the good of a brand, if it’s going to be sued out of usefulness?
(Whether they’ve got a case or not.)
March 26th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I have to agree with Henry, in that, GPL would probably have been a better avenue for themselves, as well as those interested.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:57 am
This is nothing new, and they should go open source. The administrator of http://coda.fm has already stated that if he is forced to close the website, it will open source the code and distribute it along the database and all the torrents.
See the response about that to one of the users:
http://coda.uservoice.com/pages/general/suggestions/102373-if-you-get-sueued-make-others-easy-to-clone-this-site-