Baidu sued by Chinese copyright group
Claims 'unfettered piracy'
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A music industry group in China said it sued Baidu.com earlier this year for the search engine's alleged violation of copyright involving more than 50 songs.
Music Copyright Society of China released a statement last Friday in which group official Qu Jingming said Baidu had provided "music listening, broadcasting and downloading services in various forms on its website without approval, and through unfettered piracy, earning huge advertising revenue on its huge number of hits".
According to the Press Association, the society filed a copyright lawsuit in a Beijing court in January in which it claimed damages and alleged that Baidu had used 50 songs illegally.
The group also claimed that legitimate online music providers were forced to shut down their services because of the alleged piracy.
Baidu, which is China's biggest search engine firm, has already been under the spotlight in recent weeks.
In February, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) said a number of music bigwigs, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd, Universal Music Ltd and Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd, had sued Baidu for copyright infringement.
The music giants had asked the court to order Baidu to remove all links to thousands of websites that provide pirated copies of songs that are owned by the major record labels. ®
COMMENTS
Search Engines can be sued
Responding to the first comment, Google has been sued several times for copyright infringement, often over image searches.
But Baidu is NOT just a music search engine
This is where everyone here has got it wrong. Baidu is in all probability involved in hosting the music files too, and that is why it is being accused of "engaging in piracy". In order to maintain the guise of a search engine, it has also seeded the "3rd party sites" with music files so that it can ingeniously "search" and deliver the required music files for download while seemingly keeping their hands clean. But credit to them that they have also managed to tap into all of this support from the commenters here, who have been fooled into thinking that Baidu is clean.
Ahhhh, China........
I will always fondly remember China as that great global hub for protection of copyright. A place where it is impossible to buy "Installer" CDs and DVDs.
They don't like it too much when it happens to them then?
Funny, that.
Paris - 'cos it brings a tear to the eye, those poor Chinese
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