Warner Music Suing MP3 Search Engine Seeqpod (WMG)

Warner Music Group (WMG) is suing Seeqpod, the most popular of a new breed of music search engine/players with a new twist on the original Napster strategy -- rather than let users download copies of other people's MP3s, it lets them listen to streaming MP3s hosted on other people's websites.

Seeqpod is super-useful: The last numbers we saw pegged the engine's catalog at 8 million songs, and it's got a slick interface, quick response time, etc. Whether it's legal is a different matter. Seeqpod's site has a lengthy defense against charges of copyright violation, which boils down to "hey, it's not on our site" but Warner isn't buying it. That doesn't mean the company won't end up working with it down the line: Last year the company sued imeem, the streaming music service/social network, then settled and now licenses its music to the site.