Brilliant: FIQL Avoids Copyright Trap Through Music Videos
Michael Arrington
23 comments »
FIQL is a nice niche social network focused on music playlists. Users upload, categorize and share their playlists with others. People who view the playlists can buy songs through links to iTunes and other music services. But for the most part they can’t simply listen to the songs online, other than through somewhat cumbersome links to Napster and Rhapsody, which allow people to listen to songs for free with certain restrictions.
Since listening to music on playlists has so many restrictions, the service hasn’t grown much - it has just 15,000 playlists from 50,000 registered users since launching in 2005.
But at 9 AM PST I have a feeling they will be getting a whole bunch of new users and a lot more playlists when they launch a new product called FIQL TV. That’s because they figured out a brilliant, if somewhat obvious, end-around to copyright laws that restrict them from playing music outright: music videos hosted on third party video sites like YouTube.
It’s widely known that music videos are available on video sharing sites (some of them are even distributed legally). In fact, sites like Middio have sprung up that do nothing more than provide music video search for YouTube and other sites. There are a number of services that also allow people to download these videos to their hard drives (see our own YouTube download tool) - and converting them to iPod format is only a small additional step.
Videos are regularly pulled down as copyright holders complain, but they are quickly re-added by other users. That means bookmarks of videos often go stale, but using a search engine will always help you find what you’re looking for in no time.
FIQL Leverages Music Videos To Avoid Copyright Trap
So here’s what FIQL has done - users can create a playlist on FIQL, or import an existing one from iTunes or other services. FIQL will then go out and grab music videos from the third party video sites and add them to the playlist. You and others who view the playlist can then play the videos.
FIQL has also created an embeddable player for those videos that can be dropped in to MySpace and other social networks and websites, or add it to their Facebook application. So now, if you have a favorite playlist in iTunes, you can simply export it to FIQL and get an embeddable player back that plays the music videos of all your songs. An screencast overview of the new service is here.
Problem solved.
Or, mostly. Technically FIQL is still subject to copyright claims. But they’ve pulled themselves one step away from direct contact with the content owners, who are mainly focused on the sites that actually host the infringing content. Case law is still developing in this area, but they are under little real threat of litigation.
That sounds brilliant, but wait until the lawyers come up with a creative hundreds of pages of lawsuit claims.
Great ideas fortunately/unfortunately there is a law to respect. They too have their own story
awesome player
Hi, the embeddable player is great, but I can’t seem to find the fiql facebook app anywhere…
The standards of “brilliance” on this website have gone precipitously downhill. There is nothing “brilliant” about this, they’ve created yet another music video player that has little to do with their core product.
What percentage of your playlist items have videos though? Seriously? I’m thinking maybe 10% of mine, but I’ll admit I have eccentric taste…
Erm, this would technically infringe youtube’s T&Cs about embedding videos and showing advertising around it:
You agree not to use the Website, including the YouTube Embeddable Player for any commercial use, without the prior written authorization of YouTube. Prohibited commercial uses include any of the following actions taken without YouTube’s express approval:
sale of access to the Website or its related services (such as the Embeddable Player) on another website;
use of the Website or its related services (such as the Embeddable Player), for the primary purpose of gaining advertising or subscription revenue;
the sale of advertising, on the YouTube website or any third-party website, targeted to the content of specific User Submissions or YouTube content;
and any use of the Website or its related services (such as the Embeddable player) that YouTube finds, in its sole discretion, to use YouTube’s resources or User Submissions with the effect of competing with or displacing the market for YouTube, YouTube content, or its User Submissions. (For more information about prohibited commercial uses, see our FAQ.)
Looks good, will use it, while it lasts.
It’s a terrible name for a site. Depending on how you pronounce the vowels, of course
fiqul = fickle
or
fiqul = feacal
how come u havent talked about playzr yet? its pretty cool and very useful for facebook
Anyone managed to find facebook app FIQL?
If you think FIQL’s end around approach to the copyright issue is brilliant you really should check out http://www.MXPLAY.com
nice yaar
Agree with joe, how terrible a playlist is one restricted to songs with videos?
Also with Kanute. You can disagree by not buying, not supporting, but not by just making your own rules and rationalizing it. If you think another revenue model would make more sense for music, find an artist that works that way and sit alone in a room with your bad music and sense of self-satisfaction.
I’m starting to be truly amazed at how outright cheap people are. There are plenty of ways to test an album before buying, and paying $10-$15 for something I generally spend at least 10 hours listening to is DIRT cheap.
Milo will do almost all the same things, including “teh soshul” parts:
http://www.getmiro.com/
P.S. “FIQL” is a brilliant name, puts the marketing “geniuses” at Clown Co. to shame.
Sounds like contributory infringement to me. Really, even people unfamiliar with law should be able to distinguish equities and justice from sleazy maneuvers designed to steal.
I am beginning to wonder if some of the write ups are paid placements, directly or indirectly. Meaning, if they are done as a favor to the investors and founder in exchange of something tangible or intangible.
We have a bit of an issue here, the publisher is also writer and editor of a publication. Which naturally only leads to conflict of interest. Would MA always use “brilliant” about a company that is directly competing with something he is involved with and has a brilliant solution?
I think if MA wants to maintain credibility in long run, he might need to pull our of the entire editorial process. I know he has hired a CEO, but she is only to run the day to day things, and he is still the publisher and the editor.
@James I also wonder about that, but also know from being an avid reader of this site that Michael is a big music fan and has posted about just about every music service under the sun. Furthermore, Fiql isn’t really something that’s going to be pulling in any $$$ any time soon, so no real reason to pimp it.
Still, this ‘product’ is: not well executed, infringes on YouTube’s TOS, not strictly legal, and really just not that interesting.
Oh, and deezer is much better (not restricted to videos), and its royalties setup is transparent…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....d-service/
How is this any different from MOG?
qloud has a facebook app that does the exact same thing.
Maybe I’m missing something but isn’t this just another way to steal content without paying for it?