Here is a new image, video and music search engine from Sweden that converts online files for you.

By Pandia Guest Writer Lars Iselid, Internetbrus.com.

On February 21st the Swedish company Munax launched the multimedia search engine Playaudiovideo.

Unlike Swedish Picsearch which is focusing on pictures and video, Playaudiovideo also includes music. Much of the content is fetched from torrent-sites, and you may restrict your search to torrent sites or web-pages on the search result pages using the “Search within” pull down menu.

When you do a search, the search engine will first present video results. Further down on the page you will also find music file results. Image search results are delivered in a small column to the right.

There is a function for Transcode that lets you convert and download files in different formats through your web browser, including torrent files. This means that you do not have to install special software to access the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

Playaudiovideo warns the user that they cannot be held responsible for what you download. The Torrent network is know to contain a lot of copyrighted material.

The journalist Peter Petterson in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is skeptical about this feature:

“Playaudiovideo has a function called Transcode that may bring them into trouble. You may convert the files you are watching/listening to and save them on your hard drive. To download the content instead of watching it/listening to it is in violation of Swedish law.”

Jan-Olof Granlund of Munax tells Computer Sweden that they “are certainly aware that there are various copyright questions that have to be answered, but we do exactly what YouTube is doing and tells users that those that convert files [using our service] must ask the intellectual property right holder for permission.”

Playaudiovideo has an option that lets you filter out offensive material. Aftonbladet found porn in the results for a search on James Taylor, the musician. This indicates that this filter should be turned on if you want to avoid pornography. Picsearch, on th other hand, has opted for removing offensive material entirely from their index.

Playaudiovideo has definitely moved out into a controversial arena with music and porn. Hopefully they have have a sensible defense strategy.

This article was originally published in Internetbrus, a Swedish blog on search engines and Internet searching that has been online since early 2001. It is written for both searchers and educators.

Internetbrus is owned and edited by Lars Våge and Lars Iselid. Lars Våge works as a librarian at Mitthögskolan and a programmer for JL Informationsteknik. Lars Iselid is a librarian at the Umeå University Library, freelance journalist for the computer magazine Datormagazin. He can be found blogging under the pseudonym Cyrille at Iaslash.org.

Lars and Lars are co-authors of a book on Internet research: Informationssökning på Internet.