WastedTimes

[hbgator]

Yahoo acquired playlist-sharing site webjay.com in January. But it seems it may have bought itself a problem. Webjay.org makes downloading the Beatles' music or Kanye West's full-length video as easy as a keyword search and a click of a mouse.


Webjay enables users to build their own playlists of audio and video that is available elsewhere -- anywhere -- on the Internet. The site hosts the playlists, which have links that automatically stream or download most files for free.

Webjay founder Lucas Gonze, who began working for Yahoo in California after the acquisition, reportedly developed the site as a way to enable users to create the Internet equivalent of mix tapes from free music in cyberspace. Users can then share their playlists with others, include them on their Web sites, browse other users' playlists and play the files.

An April 2004 Wired article, written when about 100 people had contributed playlists to the site, quotes Gonze as saying, "What you can't point to is hit songs. There's no Eminem, there's no Britney (Spears)." The article noted that "the site does not support links to pirated or unauthorized music. Links to such songs will be taken down."

If that was true then, it is no longer the case. Webjay now appears to host tens of thousands of playlists, including hundreds with links to such A-list stars as Spears and Eminem. While some links to hit music were disabled, many were not.

ALL THE HITS

Through Webjay, Billboard downloaded or streamed free audio tracks ranging from the Beatles and Beyonce to 50 Cent and Gorillaz. One playlist linked to 50 videos, including full-length music videos of Madonna, Kelly Clarkson, Norah Jones and Usher. One click automatically downloaded the West/Jamie Foxx full-length music video "Gold Digger" to the computer desktop.

Yahoo executives declined to comment, but Charlene Fitzgibbon, a Yahoo spokeswoman, said: "Yahoo is currently transitioning some of the features of webjay.org into Yahoo Music's products and services. Yahoo aims to respect intellectual property rights and will remove any content when notified of material that infringes copyrights."

Yahoo is emerging as something of a poster child for the challenge of creating interactive communities while honoring the copyrights of other major media companies -- particularly the music business. Webjay's playlists make clear the extent to which the Internet is still -- perhaps increasingly -- swimming in unlicensed content.

Yahoo has worked closely with the music industry to build a legitimate digital music market. In September 2004, it bought MusicMatch for about $160 million to sell music downloads. Yahoo (and other such Web destinations as AOL and MySpace) have emerged as crucial players in the promotion of music. Yahoo's online radio network attracted 2.6 million listeners for January, the most recent numbers available from Arbitron and comScore Media Metrix. And the company streams several hundred million videos per month.

But this is not the first time Yahoo has been tied to a site that fails to honor music copyrights. One month before Yahoo acquired Webjay, music copyright holders warned the Internet giant to stop making unlicensed music available through Yahoo China. Yahoo pumped $1 billion into Internet auction site Alibaba.com last October, which operates Yahoo's China portal. That site links deep into other sites so users can easily download music -- much of it unlicensed -- for free.

Executives from the four major labels and the Recording Industry Association of America declined to comment. Several music industry executives, who did not want to speak on the record, wondered why Yahoo acquired Webjay without immediately implementing some sort of filtering system.

"When you look at services like that, functionally they are no different than the old Napster," said a veteran digital music attorney who asked not to be identified. "It makes you wonder why anyone would bother to do a legitimate music service -- to go get licenses -- when they have to compete with this kind of thing."

[cyberval]

I really hope webjay stays as it is.. you get a lot of music from there....