Sony's Grouper Picks On Searchles TV

pradeepe writes "Sony's Grouper, a video sharing site, has sent Searchles, a social search engine, a cease and desist letter over Grouper videos being streamed through Searchles TV, "the Internet's first video player that empowers users to mashup videos back-to-back with one player using multiple sources like MySpace, YouTube, Google Video, Blip.tv or Grouper." Grouper claims that Searchles has "effectively stripped away Grouper's extensive copyright protection system, including the 'Flag as Inappropriate' button and the link that appears on every single page of the Grouper website to allow copyright owners to report allegedly infringing material, in accordance with the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." It's interesting to note that Grouper itself is being sued for copyright infringement."

Comments

deep linking wars replayed?

[shalunov]

This will be watched closely. Deep linking and framing are similar to the case. So far, deep linking itself has been held legal, but implying association in extensive deep linking is not. Given how well-stripped Grouper's videos are on Searchles, Grouper might have a chance.