Well, there goes Songza

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:41:26 EST

Google is cracking down on copyright-infringing videos uploaded to its site. Sort of. A copy of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" on YouTube has a yellow box which reads, "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled." This is bad news for Songza, the Web jukebox which rips the audio track from YouTube videos.

If there's no audio track to rip, Songza will go silent. But after so many obnoxious parodies using BIlly Joel's song in the past few weeks, we're not so sure that, in this particular instance, Google's ban isn't actually good news for the rest of us.

Songza has YouTube lawyers worried

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:00:02 EST

Aza Raskin, son of late, irascible Macintosh interface designer Jef Raskin, is taking after his dad. A source tells us Google's lawyers are all twisted up over Songza, an online jukebox which pulls its music selection from YouTube video soundtracks. "I've heard that YouTube's engineering staff loves Songza," our source says. "But apparently the legal department has been saying things like they "revoke" Songza's rights to use YouTube." Which of course makes sense, considering YouTube signed deals with record labels to split ad revenues. Songza, by just playing the soundtrack, and not displaying hte video where YouTube is starting to embed ads, threatens those deals. It's always cute when YouTube gets upset about copyright and all that, isn't it? Anyway, check out what's got the Googlers crying evil.

Here's a Songza embed and a YouTube embed, both from the same source. (Note that you can't play them at the same time.) Which do you like better?

Gawker: valleywag, songza

Well, there goes Songza

Songza has YouTube lawyers worried