WebProNews

Warner Bros. is suing music search engine SeeqPod accusing the company of profiting from "mass infringement" on its site.

In a complaint filed in California District Court, Warners alleges "SeeqPod directly infringes Plaintiffs' copyrighted works, including by making on-demand and unauthorized digital public performances of those works. SeeqPod secondarily infringes Plaintiffs' copyrights under the well-established doctrines of contributory, vicarious and inducement liability."

On SeeqPod's Web site the company declares that it is protected from lawsuits under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it operates as a search engine and does not host any material.

The Warner suit charges "SeeqPod searches for a particular type of content-music-that SeeqPod knows is overwhelmingly copyrighted. With simple clicks of a computer mouse, SeeqPod will play the work without authorization and will embed the link on social networking sites, like MySpace and Facebook, where the entire cycle of willful copyright infringement is repeated without end."

Last May Warner sued a similar company called Imeem that allowed users to create playlists from streamed music online. The two parties were able to come to an agreement and form a partnership.