Sony’s Grouper tells Searchles to Cease & Desist – Pot Calls Kettle Black

Last week, Searchles launched 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 and then automatically syndicate updates to the channel wherever it’s embedded across the web.

We think this is a good thing – Searchles TV gives users the freedom to view and present content on their own terms – it allows video hosting sites an additional channel for syndicating user-generated content - and it provides copyright holders with a powerful tool for aggregating and syndicating content. Not everyone agrees.

Yesterday, I opened my email and found a letter from Grouper’s attorney, Ian Balloon with Greenbird Traurig, demanding that ‘Searchels’ [sic] cease and desist. You can read Mr. Balloon’s letter here.

Apparently, Grouper wants its users to “publish to any site,” except Searchles. We’ve never made a claim to be sponsored, affiliated or endorsed by Grouper, yet inexplicably, Mr. Balloon feels that allowing users to embed Grouper videos into Searchles violates the federal Lanham Act. We can only assume that this means Grouper is sponsored, affiliated and endorsed by every website where its videos are embedded.

Mr. Balloon also asserts that Searchles has “effectively stripped away Grouper’s extensive copyright protection system,” [pause for laughter] “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.” We’re confident that Searchles complies with all provisions of the DMCA and are mystified by the allegation.

When Grouper users “publish to any site,” the above mentioned features are missing from their player. Grouper also requires you to enter your user name and password for other sites where they post video on your behalf which is a curious interpretation of other sites’ Terms of Service.

When Searchles embeds videos from video sharing services like Grouper on our website or within the Searchles TV player on other websites, those videos are still hosted at the source site. When those videos are removed from the source site for any reason including violation of copyrights, they are automatically no longer available within Searchles, Searchles TV or anywhere the player is embedded. As an added bonus, Searchles TV can also be used as a tool to help copyright owners like major television networks monitor the prevalence and extent of copyright violations at sites like Grouper. :)

And contrary to Mr. Balloon’s assertions, we do not “reformat” the content in anyway that would preclude or block Grouper or copyright owners from inserting advertisements that would display on our site as well. In fact, we think we can help media companies, social networking sites, and sites like Grouper better engage their audiences and hope they’ll call us.

We’re big fans of Sony (well maybe not their batteries), Grouper, and admire what Josh, David, Aviv and Mike have built. We’d like to work with them. But we’re dumbfounded by Mr. Balloon’s unfounded position and believe it’s anti-social to bully young companies – though we’re flattered to have Searchles TV validated by such a respected source.

What do you think?

dumbfounder