Baidu ‘not a music pirate’
p2pnet view Music:- The Big 4 record label cartel has for years been claiming China’s largest search engine, Baidu, violates their copyrights.
It’d infringed “hundreds of songs“, they asserted in 2005.
Then in 2008 a lawsuit launched by Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Hong Kong and Warner Music Hong Kong “demanded that Baidu remove music links they say infringe their copyrights”, says Agence France-Presse.
Now the Beijing No1 Intermediate People’s Court says Baidu isn’t guilty of copyright infringement.
To the contrary, “The court believes that Baidu provides music search service for Internet users, not pirated MP3 contents,” says SinoCast Daily Business Beat, going on:
“Hence, the company has no obligation to compensate record companies for their losses from piracy.
“A lawyer of the Beijing Lawyers Association points out that search engines have not infringed the music copyright of record companies. Instead, they help the latter find pirated contents more promptly, and make a success in the burgeoning Internet industry.”
Stay tuned.
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..… and identi.ca
p2pnet – Big Music sues China’s Baidu, September 18, 2005
Agence France-Presse – China court sides with Baidu, January 26, 2010
SinoCast Daily Business Beat – Record Companies Again Lose Lawsuit against Baidu, January 26, 2010
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January 26th, 2010 at 11:34 am
but wasn’t Napster basically just a search engine?
January 26th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Yeah, but Napster wasn’t litigated in China…
January 26th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Didn’t the pirated content pass through Napsters servers?