RSSNew Chinese law finds Yahoo in copyright violation
By Ed Oswald | Published December 21, 2007, 1:39 PM
Chinese courts handed the world's recording industry a significant victory Thursday, finding the search giant's Chinese music service was committing copyright infringement.
Under new laws passed by the country last year, a Beijing court found that Yahoo China violated copyright by allowing users to search, download, and play pirated music from its Web site.
While the company had previously been found guilty of infringement, it had appealed the ruling. This judgment effectively ends Yahoo's efforts to defend itself against such charges, and essentially makes it and other services who "deep link" in the country liable.
The IFPI says that such practice hurts the record industry's efforts to deal with the huge problem of piracy in China. The organization estimates that about 99 percent of downloaded music in the country is pirated, with services like Baidu and Yahoo China exacerbating the problem.
Baidu escaped any charges, as the company's alleged infringement happened before the new law went into effect. Thus the court ruled for Baidu even though it found it was assisting in copyright infringement.
IFPI officials warned however that it would go after Baidu anew under the new laws and that it was confident it would prevail.
"Our member companies seek partnership, not conflict, with China's Internet companies -- but that partnership has to be based on proper respect for intellectual property rights," IFPI chairman and CEO John Kennedy said.
Neither Yahoo China nor Baidu were available for comment at press time.
Can you say provincialism?
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I'm not sure if i agree with this ruling or not. Sounds like according to this new law any site that is found linking to a pirate site, either knowingly or unknowingly can be sued for copyright infringement regardless if they host the files or not.
Search engines ARE notorious for linking everything that comes through. Many warez and porn sites are found through searching any engine (or using ones like dogpile) and also through word of 'text' in the internt community (chat rooms, emails etc.)
Is this ruling truly right? I don't know but i do haveto laugh at the irony of the situation. China IS notorious for massive copyright infringement and for them to go after a US based company instead of chinese one (at least as far as i've heard. Have they sued any companies within China for copyright infringement?) for this very reason is almost laughable!
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Just fill the songs with Lead and they'll be fine for Chinese law.
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The Chinese finding OTHERS in copyright violation? Where did this happen, Bizzaro World?
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who would have thought the Chinese Government would have turned on yahoo after they (Yahoo) helped them (Chinese Gov.) imprison their own citizens. How ironic.
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Looks like China may be trying to pull the media's attention away from all those toy recalls.
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Yahoo should just pull out of China and be done with it. Block all Chinese users, shut down the Chinese operation and tell the dictatorship that be to piss off.
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And lose billions in profit? Surrrrre...
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I continue makeup: for example, the gba?nds?psp's rom or game iso, you can easy to download from big game website in china, it also copyright violation, but the country don't look for. So it in gear. If you want to down some of software, it look for this, it can let you approve of.
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I usually download music?its a perfect edition) to my mp3 player from a forum of China, I think its in gear. Although it is pirated, but a lot of Chinese both have consciousness of for free, do not consider copyright infringement.
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This is odd. More pirate music and movies come from China. Im guessing China is knocking off some of the competition in the music area ???
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Man, Yahoo is getting kicked all over the place in China this year!
They believe 99 percent of downloaded music is pirated?! WOW! :eek:
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"The IFPI says that such practice hurts the record industry's efforts to deal with the huge problem of piracy in China."
Funny, here I thought PHYSICAL piracy was the huge issue in China. When you don't want to fix problem A, divert attention to problem B. Awesome strategy.
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It's just cause Yahoo isn't using lead in the service.
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WOW they have a lot of nerve claiming that someone is doing something that they have been doing for years. I guess they want exclusive rights to steal anything they want and call it their own.
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shame on yahoo...
when a red country enforces the same values as a blue country, then the perpetrator is definitely guilty (period)
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China's gov does not have a problem with yahoo distributing music on its website. they have a problem with yahoo not paying their govt for the privilege of distributing music in China.
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well said
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