RedLasso, a Philadelphia-based startup which serves as kind of a universal TiVo for embeddable clips, was issued a cease and desist letter by multiple networks today. The company, which has been cagey about the obvious copyright issues since I first ran into the startup at PodCamp Philly last year, even managed to pull a fast one on TechCrunch — Reuters ran the report of the legal issues before TechCrunch's post about the company went live this afternoon, prompting a half-hearted update. (C'mon, where's Michael Arrington's temper when it's actually appropriate?) If I were RedLasso, I would have made friendly with the Electronic Frontier Foundation before making nice with the Huffington Post and other publishers (including Gawker Media), which now face scads of dead-embed posts in their archives.

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