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Yahoo! China forced to pay record labels

24 April 2007 11:46 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 4 comments

Yesterday, Beijing's No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ordered the Chinese arm of Yahoo! to pay 210,000 yuan ($27,000 USD) to the record labels that had brought the suit forward claiming that the search engine infringed copyrights by allowing links to pirated music on its engine.

Included were such giants as Warner Music Group, Universal and BMG.

After the decision was handed down, the company stated that they would be appealing, arguing that "it was already doing all it could to protect intellectual property, and shouldn't be held liable for content on third-party sites".

In a similar case last year, the court ruled in favor of the search engine Baidu.com and so the Yahoo decision was somewhat surprising.

However, the court decision did admit that Yahoo wasn't completely to blame for the infringement, despite the fact that their links helped aid the piracy process.

The case was filed by the IFPI in January and after the decision was handed down, the group praised the court:

"This judgment will boost the growth of a licensed digital music business in China and provide better protection for intellectual property in this vast, exciting market," chairman and CEO John Kennedy said.

"The judgment gives our members the legal basis to require all music search engines in China to remove infringing links from their service - which we will do," he continued.

Source:
BetaNews

Permalink to this article

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Baidu sued over copyrights again (2 March 2008)

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ogryzek (Member) 24 April 2007 13:42
Quote: "This judgment will boost the growth of a licensed digital music business in China and provide better protection for intellectual property in this vast, exciting market," chairman and CEO John Kennedy said. Does this guy believe in what he's saying ? Or is he out of his mind ? That 'vast and exciting market' bought some 244 copies of Microsoft's Vista in the initial two weeks. (A story denied by Microsoft) What makes him think that Chinese will suddenly forgo their pirate ways and start buying music from legitimate places ? [ + quote]
TY4ever (Senior Member) 24 April 2007 14:00
I totally agree with you.I've been to China several times and to say stopping chinese from piracy,that's impossible.People there do not even know what is the difference between an original cd and a copied one,because the copied one is so well-packed that it looks exactly like original ones and the price difference between these two are six times or more.For them the way they see things about protection of intellectual property is completely or if i can say a world of difference from other countries,like Europe or the US.You can't even imagine how the market for piracy contributes to China's economy,it represents a much bigger margin than the market for original ones.Sometimes you'll see the authorities taking action against piracy but it's just to make it looks like they are contributing and co-operating with international laws,but in fact they really do not care,that's not something very important for them to care about,for them they have much more things to concentrate on. I'm not for piracy but that's how i see things the way they are when everytime i go there. Vincent. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 24 April 2007 21:38
Poor Yahoo. They can not stop all the search links they have popping up on the results pages. And if they think that they have stopped a lot of piracy now. Just wait a day or two and see how quickly another one will pop up. [ + quote]
duckNrun (Member) 24 April 2007 22:45
I do NOT want to hear one peep from Yahoo about this ruling. The law of the land has spoken and as they said when they defended their action to help spy on their users for the Chinese govt: we have to comply with the local laws and decisions of the countries we do business in. Us being in the Chinese market will help bring openess to the chinese public.... Well Yahoo the law is clear here too... or do you only say that you cant argue with Chinese law when it DOESNT hurt your pocket book??? EH? [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 24 April 2007 22:47