Redlasso, the video site that allows bloggers to post clips of television content, has shut down its beta in response to a recently filed lawsuit by Hulu-backers Fox and NBC.
In May, Fox, CBS and NBC issued Cease and Desist notices to Redlasso for copyright violation, which the company largely ignored. In June the company established a “Media Advisory Board” headed by a number of ex-studio execs that they hoped would help smooth things over with the networks.
Since its launch eight months ago, Redlasso has seen exponential growth amongst bloggers, and can be seen on a number of top news, gossip, and political blogs. The site allows users to watch recorded feeds of a number of television shows, and “clip” potions of them for playback on their sites. Among the channels available are ESPN, Fox News, and CNN.
Redlasso records and serves all of this content from its servers, without legal license for any of it. The company has long held to the belief that it is protected by the first amendment, and that the snippets that bloggers distribute qualify for fair use (the embedded clips can only be 10 minutes long). Fair use may apply to the snippets, but the site is still hosting entire episodes, even if they are only available to approved bloggers.
The site will continue to operate for its Bussiness and “Radio to Web” clients.
that is a crock of shit..since nas did the Colbert show with a song called sly fox i watched it on Redlasso and i think there tring to go after redlasso for nas going off on Fox
To TechCrunch: Where did all the useful comments with insightful feedback go? The comments used to be as interesting as the articles themselves, now look what it has become.
TechCrunch should moderate the comments and only let the useful ones go through.
You can’t ask techcrunch to become communist dictators for comments. This is North America where freedom of speech in theory is protected. If people want to give insightful comments they can. If not they don’t. If they start to pick and choose users will get mad. All they can do is not show spam, or inappropriate context that violates some basic standards.
Why don’t you stop complaining and make a point of giving insightful comments yourself?
Actually, moderating comments is common practice in blogs and it prevents the broken window effect from occurring where people feel it is ok to misbehave because others are doing so as well. TechCrunch is a popular blog and anytime you mix this many people together, it takes some counter-intuitive things to maintain order. Moderating the comments would not detract at all from what TechCrunch is trying to offer, which is being the first place to get tech news, and offering good high quality analysis. These ridiculous comments only serve to detract from that.
When Redlasso premiered at BlogWorld Expo last November, I asked the same questions, as I saw the inherent problems in their business model. The lawsuit was going to happen sooner or later, as the television networks are very picky about copyright.
About 2 months ago, Michael Arrington said “[the winners] will be the companies that throw out everything that’s come before and build new businesses around the natural behavior of people. Remove friction and win.” He proposed the idea of ‘Rethinking Copyright Law but according to this article, rethinking copyright law is a huge mistake.
What the heck? I thought when they debuted at blog world that they’d had all this worked out and were legit… So all this time we may as well have been using clips obtained through torrents?
Old media sure does hate people who give them free promotion. God knows I’ll steer clear of any projects that would even acknowledge the existence of content owned by those dinosaurs, and I have to think other people are learning the same lesson.
I don’t think anyone is surprised at this. I would guess that the investors probably just wanted to use the public uploads as a promotion for it’s business offerings any how.
TL - http://www.offur.com/BetterThanTechCrunch
What does the First Amendment have to do with this?
Peter: er, nothing? Who said the First Amendment had anything to do with this?
@Brooks
“The company has long held to the belief that it is protected by the first amendment”
it’s right in the post
Ouch.. blame for on Youtube, basically they did the same thing, got away with it and now the big media will be after anyone that is trying to take away their piece of the pie.
I wonder if they will start back up, by having the right paperwork filed and such. hmm.. maybe.. maybe not. http://blabtech.blogspot.com
Peter, moe: Er, right. I missed that. It’s a really clueless position for them to take, though. The First Amendment protects use of copyrighted material for satire and parody. Copyright law has the concept of “fair use”, which is a superset of the 1st Am protections, and that’s what Redlasso should be claiming. See http://www.ar-d.com/blog_entri.....-Fair-Use/
I guess it goes to show how confused Redlasso is. They hitched their business model to the sinking ship that is old media, they didn’t understand the degree to which old media is suicidal and attacks anyone who makes their content more useful, and they’re not even clear on fair use versus free speech.
You clearly don’t understand how the 1st Amendment works.
1st Amendment applies to GOVERNMENT regulation and restriction of speech.
1st Amendment DOES NOT apply to private regulation or restriction of speech, such as by individuals or corporations.
Fair use is part of copyright doctrine, not the 1st Amendment doctrine. Copyright is not a subset of the 1st amendment; it supersedes the 1st amendment (i.e., copyright can limit the 1st amendment, but not vice versa, in that copyright can restrict someone from improperly using speech “owned” by someone else.)
Why don’t they just shift their model to embedding hulu’s content (rather than illegally hosting it themselves?
Umm, also, someone actually funded a startup based on the idea of uploading someone else’s content?!
So I guess they’d love to go after libraries, too? I mean, they do host the full content of books, whether people use only a chapter or not. Some people would copyright fire if they could, and charge the rest of us for lighting matches.
excellent point.
excellent point? pointless point. No comparison at all. The book the library loans to you was paid for. I still do not understand why people think there is any excuse for stealing content. If they wanted in this business they should have taken the time to find legitimate content providers (and yes, that usually means some kind of compensation to the content owner/creator).
Seems to me that some of the previous commentors can’t tell the difference between licensing and owning. DVDs are owned, movies/TV shows are licensed; Books are owned, the content is licensed. If a library lends a book they’re letting someone borrow owned property - if a library takes a copyrighted work, rips it into digital format, and then starts distributing it then they’re violating the licensing agreement of the person who licensed the original content which was published in the book.
Nuances, people.
That is a good point. A library pays for one copy of the book, it doesn’t pay distribution rights for that book, even though hundreds if not over time thousands of people might read that copy of the book for free. Copyright law is quite applicable to printed material, but there is clearly some issues with it being used for more transient things like music and video. I think a lot of people think copyright is the same as a patent — they are very different.
The original tv broadcast was paid for too (in the forms of ads that ran at the same time).
The library analogy is precise: a block of content is paid-for once at time of initial transmission; libraries and red lasso both made that already paid-for content available.
This is why libraries maintain subscriptions to all the major locla newspapers, too: they bought a legitimate copy at the time of initial publication, and then kept it around for subsequent lending; the fact that libraries haven’t taken to recording-and-archiving all the local tv and radio broadcasts (which is what red lasso was trying to do) was more a matter of economics (too expensive) than of mission.
What distinguishes the library from red lasso is that the library has been around long enough that people are used to what it does, and that libraries have some exemptions grandfathered in. That’s it.
mal: there are special exemptions in copyright law for libraries. See http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc.....;-000-.htm
And yes, the content industries have tried to gut that provision. It’s only a matter of time before they succeed.
It will be interesting to see which side of the copyright law the court lands on. Might we be looking at a basis for new law?
FYI to TechCrunch — the link to your RSS sub isn’t working.
The site is still up and running. i thought shut down meant not working at all. maybe there having a closeout sale?
Does anyone think hosting “links” of embeddable Flash not the actual flash source files from some of these giants like NBC is A ok? What they could do/could have done is have their flash widget clip the content as it is being streamed live, instead of hosting it.
I hope this doesn’t lead to the end of them. I love Redlasso.
Does any one know a site, that provides similar service to Redlasso.com? I am really missing the news clipping, so are my readers…
Scrabulous, the facebook app has just been sued as well. See more info on TL
TL - http://www.offur.com/BetterThanTechCrunch
What does that have to do with this story?
I appreciate the effort that you put into your blog but your marketing needs work.
Can say this is much of a surprise, how long did they expect to run with this? Love the idea but the networks are never going to get on board with it.
Also “betterthantc” why don’t you drop a few more links in the comments buddy, jeez.
it is just not a good idea to host copyright infringing material…you will not get away with it in the long run….this is just like EMI suing Hi5 and VideoEgg….no matter how you slice it, the networks and record labels have the right to do this….just use and post material like the music we have available on AudioMicro at http://www.audiomicro.com and you won’t end up with a legal mess on your hands
I guess, you are right about hosting copyright material…..just discovered that Bloomberg charges $ 300 on monthly basis for much less TV than Redlasso.com was providing for free.
I truly hope they can find some solution and restore the news clipping soon.
The library analogies are completely incorrect. Last time I looked, my local librarian wasn’t trying to cash in on an IPO. Can we not compare a mostly self-serving corporation to an institution that was established and ismaintained for the common good.
I thought RedLasso had all this legal stuff worked out. Sorry to see this development is is a fantastic tool for bloggers. Maybe they can work something out with the networks.
If you want to sue someone, there are always flaws to be exploited, specially on internet and copyrighted material.
The few times I had a chance to see a video hosted by RedLasso, and it said that the server was down. Are RL’s servers ever up?
how is providing videos like this legal:
http://redlasso.blogspot.com/2.....-idol.html
Hey, that’s a FOX video clip of American Idol. no wonder why they are suing, they don’t get any royalties for the rebroadcast of it.
I read anarticle that points out possible Redlasso responses to a August 4 court decision involving Cablevision cable company. It appears the Redlasso may not die after all:
Online Tivo with Redlasso?
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http://www.atelier-us.com/medi.....h-redlasso
This article points out possible Redlasso responses to an August 4 court decision involving Cablevision cable company. It appears that Redlasso may not dissolve after all.
Redlasso still has to pay for its prior copyright infringements.
The networks aren’t going to forget, especially if this company makes any profit at all.