Oracle sues Qtrax, claims P2P site owes $1.8 million
Copy of Qtrax's bounced $1.8 million check to Oracle that was included in court documents. Routing numbers were redacted.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)Oracle, the giant enterprise software company, has accused Qtrax, the legal peer-to-peer music service, of copyright infringement and breach of contract in a $2 million lawsuit filed last week in Northern California.
Qtrax is the music service that was ridiculed in January 2008 after the four major labels denied the company's claims that it had licensing agreements with them. Eventually, Qtrax did get the major label deals. Nonetheless, the start-up has apparently run into some trouble paying bills in the past several months, said a source close to the company.
Oracle said in the complaint, filed with U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the problem began when Qtrax's payment for database software Oracle provided bounced. In November 2008, Oracle received a $1.8 million check from Qtrax but the check was returned for insufficient funds, Oracle alleges in court documents.
Numerous attempts were made to collect the money from Qtrax, but the company never made good, Oracle claims. "Qtrax's failure to pay the outstanding invoices constitutes a material breach of the software license," Oracle's attorney wrote. Meanwhile, Oracle asserted in the court documents that Qtrax continued to use Oracle's software.
Oracle representatives did not respond to interview requests. Allan Klepfisz, Qtrax's CEO, acknowledged that the company has been "at times short of money" but has recently acquired new funding.
"We're not in trouble, thankfully," Klepfisz said. "I feel both Oracle and ourselves will get beyond this. You should also know we have not used any of the licenses under this contract (with Oracle)."
Qtrax's troubles come at a time when ad-supported music sites are struggling to generate revenue. Two of them, SpiralFrog and Ruckus, were forced to shut down earlier this year.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
Not that Oracle is a great database.
Don't tell Google that - they use it as their main DB. (if you know how to write software correctly, you don't have to rely so much on DB features, eh? ;) ).
There's also PostgreSQL, which scales very nicely and costs $0.00... man, these guys just didn't think, or they were really in love with RAC, one of the two.
funny how those things work....does Apple hold a board seat, I wonder?
You've got to wonder who's censoring these blogs.
If saying that Greg Sandoval has a ridiculous moustache is a "personal attack" .... so much for freedom of speech.
Shame on you CNET. Maybe Greg should shave his silly facial hair and then write a news story about that. Then we wouldnt be subjected to meaningless drivel about a multi billion dollar goliath with a claim against a minute david of a start up. Get it together Greg, Look in the mirror .... and shave my man.
There is no freedom of speech on private company blogs or message boards, so do your homework before barking nonsense you don't understand. That being said, I believe the point you should be making is that, especially since the change of ownership, CNET's editorial oversight has shown a marked decline in quality and the message board has become overly censored which clearly shows this is less about journalism and the exchange of ideas and more about their marketing partners' image. So much for integrity, CNET... it'll be missed and it must have been a sad day when they realized industry rags like theinquirer.net now hold more credibility.
Can you say RIP OFF? I knew you could....
If this isn't a whopper advertisement for open source software, then what is?
There is no software on the face of the earth worth this much, no matter how much you use it, or how many licenses you have. This goes for any other company that charges this much for their software.
Don't gimme this garbage about how many "man years" it takes to make this software. This is the bill for just one company, how many other companies out there are paying millions of dollars for software? Add it all up, and these companies are WAY over charging.
No wonder recently one Vancouver school division stopped using MS Office on their students and staffs computers and stopped paying the licenses. Once they did, with the savings they were able to purchase fully outfited computer rooms for every school in their division.
Looking at that cost, I will no longer pay heed to people who claim open source is just as expensive because of the required training and support payments. No matter how high those payments are (which are also likely to be one-time payments) they can't possibly be anywhere near as high as these companies are charging for their software licenses.
Sorry, but there is no justification for the amount of money these companies charge for licensing their software.
1. They (Qtrax) are going to make a $gazillion with it, so the DB provider wants a piece of the pie.
2. Nobody forced the executives at Qtrax to use Oracle. As you wrote, there are alternatives out there. They probably signed a contract with an agreed upon price. Why did they sign a contract then if they don't intend to pay?
3. Support. When you use a DB to run a mission critical system, you want some serious support behind it. Free software is nice, but when it craps out, who do you call? Ghostbusters? :)
4. Oracle is the best DB engine out there (we can argue about it of course) so they charge accordingly.
Again, I don't see why you are making a big deal out of this. Oracle's pricing is public information (google it if you want) and last time I checked, sales people at Oracle are not forcing anybody to buy it. It's a free market. If people buy Oracle at this price, it's because they think it's worth it. Where is the problem?
1.You don't base the price of your software on what someone is going to do with it. That's called ripping them off.
2. You're right, there were other choices. Too bad they chose to get ripped off. Maybe if they didn't, they would be in a better financial position right now.
3. There are many companies selling support as I mentioned above. It doesn't take a genius to find one, and they will charge a heck of a lot less than $1.8 Million. After all, all the support you purchase for one machine can provide knowledge for all the machines. Teach a man to fish....
4. Who cares if it's the best out there? They're still ripping off their customers.
@ gkent1 According to this story: http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/Daily-News/0c8fac07-b6bd-44ff-a37c-80f25ac5c44f.html they did save that much.
@ Mr. Dee I brought MS into this because they're another company that rips off their customers by overcharging for their software. "Does a desktop license for Microsoft Office cost 1.8 million dollars?", that would depend on how many desktops we're talking about. From what I've heard, it's far too few.
You need a hell of alot of desktops to rack up in the millions and if the company is going to be making a fortune off of software then the company will charge accordingly MS is hardly ripping anyone off have you seen the price for a photoshop license recently?
Now servers and back-end software licenses? Now we can start making progress towards racking up the expenses!
As it is, $1.8m is easy to rack up on Oracle gear... if you're stupid. The top-end per CPU price for Oracle DB software can cost up to ~$40k per socket. The trick is, you don't have to pay that if you don't want all the trimmings, and you don't toss everything under the sun onto an Oracle DB - only that data that requires retrieval in the fastest possible time.
I mean, damn - you wouldn't use an F-18 to haul cargo, would'ya?
No, that's called getting paid for the value of what you create. The value of software is what it adds to the businesses using it, not a hands-off attempt at pricing the technology.
I know what you meant, but I had to.
Seriously? Who is investing in this company? I want a name. I want to know who it is that's giving out pennies from heaven.
The reason is this: I have this project. See, there's this fancy hooker two blocks away from my home, but she's classy, you know, $3000-a-night. So anyway, I was wondering if whoever funded Qtrax could invest in some cocaine, mirrors and a gimp mask so that I can make it a special evening/week.
All I'll need is 1 million dollars, and you've got a much better chance of getting your money back on this investment than on Qtrax, because there's half a chance that in my coke-induced stupor, I'll put it all on Black when I go to Vegas.
Investors should know that a fair amount of the cash is earmarked for medical treatment to re-attach my pee-pee afterwards.
The hooker benjwah wants investors for is a safer way to go then to crawl into bed with these predators.
- by qnet August 10, 2009 7:33 AM PDT
- @RandomWalk: "(if you know how to write software correctly, you don't have to rely so much on DB features, eh? ;) )."
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(25 Comments)In other words: humans are cheap, so reinvent the wheel instead of taking advantage of supported, proven capabilities in pre-existing software.
Brilliant.