RedLasso’s Copyright Time Bomb Explodes
The TV networks accused RedLasso of copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition, false and deceptive practices, claiming “serious and irreparable harm.” They gave the company till May 29 to respond.
Though we at NewTeeVee believe RedLasso performs a valuable service by making relevant clips of television embeddable, we’ve been hung up on its lack of licensing deals all along. But the company told us it had been founded with approval from broadcasters and would soon get rights to their content. (See: “RedLasso: Cool News Vid Tools, but No Content Deals on Which to Use Them” from last year).
Just a couple weeks ago we wrote about the company’s insane traffic growth — some 24 million uniques in April. RedLasso drew so much traffic, despite the fact it was still only available to 18,000 beta testers, because it allows users to embed video for viewing by the general public. Numbers like that (not to mention bragging about them) are bound to draw some attention.
At the time, we asked “Just to be certain, they still don’t have deals with any networks, right?” A spokesperson’s response: “No, they don’t.”
RedLasso was singing the same tune in a statement to Reuters today:
“We believe that curtailing distribution through the Redlasso platform only exacerbates a flawed distribution model. We hope to develop mutually beneficially partnerships with the world’s major media companies, including many of those we’ve heard from today.”
peHUB reported May 14 that RedLasso was looking to raise $15 million in funding to add to the more than $9.4 million it had raised from Anthem Capital, Osage Ventures, Guggenheim Opportunities Investors and angels. RedLasso CEO Ken Hayward told peHUB he was expecting $500,000 in revenue this year, and $9 million next year. We’d imagine this letter might put a dent in those plans.
Here’s the full document, as posted on Silicon Alley Insider:
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Wow.. this sounds like Broadcast.com’s early model. Maybe they should save Yahoo! :-)
revilo on May 20th, 2008 at 7:57 pm - Permalink
[...] RedLasso slapped by news networks for recording complete broadcasts [...]
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What will I do without redlasso? If they need funding they should ask us to pay a fee to use their service. I would be willing to do so. Their services is excellent!
accidentalsexiness on June 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 am - Permalink
The Redlasso model was flawed from the beginning with no programmers signed up and their continued position publicly means that no programmers are likely to sign up. This is a major black-eye from which they will be hard pressed to recover from.
There’s a new company called Onecast (www.1cast.com), that is about to launch in partnership with the leading news programmers both here in the US and the UK. I participated in the Alpha and it was fantastic. Can’t wait for the Beta!
Newsjunkie on July 24th, 2008 at 11:04 am - Permalink
[...] Onecast and/or 1cast that was apparently founded and funded by Craig McCaw, based on a tip from a commenter whom we have reason to believe may work for the company. The main guy at Onecast seems to be a [...]
One to Watch: Onecast « NewTeeVee on July 31st, 2008 at 11:00 am - Permalink