A group of leading international record companies have lost
their lawsuit against Baidu.com, one of China's largest Internet
search engines, for the alleged illegal downloading and sharing of
their music.
The seven companies, including EMI, SONY BMG, Warner Music and
Universal Music, accused Baidu.com of engaging in illegal
downloading and playing 137 pieces of music owned by the record
companies online without their permission.
They demanded a public apology from Baidu, the suspension of its
download service and compensation of 1.73 million yuan
(US$216,250).
But Beijing's First Intermediate Court ruled that Baidu's
service, which provides web links to the music, does not constitute
an infringement as all the music is downloaded from web servers of
third parties.
Baidu argued that the MP3 search engine it provided was the same
as other search engines providing links to web pages, news and
pictures.
"If the music companies had won, the whole search engine sector
would have ground to a halt," said a Baidu spokesman.
Some web servers have put a huge amount of copyrighted music
onto the Internet and offered them to millions of netizens without
permission from copyright owners.
Baidu said it searched all music file formats through the
Internet, such as ".mp3" or ".wav", making no distinction between
copyrighted and pirated songs.
John Kennedy, chairman of the International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry (IFPI), representing the recording industry
worldwide, voiced his dissatisfaction at the ruling, saying the
IFPI will support the music companies if they appeal to a higher
court.
(Xinhua News Agency November 19, 2006)