Songza has YouTube lawyers worried
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?