Andre Yoskowitz
24 Apr 2007 11:46
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