Musicians to sue search engine
By Xu Chi |
January 26, 2011, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A RECORD company plans to sue the country's biggest Internet search engine, Baidu, on behalf of 27 of its musicians for alleged copyright infringement.
The 13th Month Record Co has already sent a lawyer's letter to Baidu, demanding 6.85 million yuan (US$1.04 million) in compensation for 137 songs that cost an average 50,000 yuan each to produce.
The website has been offering free download links for years and has been the subject of many similar lawsuits during that time, but the latest row hit the headlines because it closely follows the shutdown of free music and video downloading services by China's biggest file-sharing website, VeryCD.com.
Lu Zhongqiang, CEO of the record company, said it had been preparing for the lawsuit since last October - getting the musicians together, notarizing legal copyrights, holding street concerts and dramas with anti-infringement themes - and was now ready to stand up against Baidu.
Lu said that one of his colleagues had described Baidu as a "deadly parasite that doesn't care about the life of its host (the record companies)." Now it was time for the website to pay, said Lu.
Lu believed the nation's heavy focus on intellectual property rights protection will help them punish the "parasite."
A Baidu official said the company had no comment on the issue.
A report in Wenhui Daily said that Baidu had been sued more than 100 times by record companies, associations, various artists and musicians over similar copyright infringement issues since it started to offer free MP3 searches.
Baidu lost some lawsuits and won others, but the search engine never stopped its free music search service.
According to lawyer Wu Dong, the problem remains because of two totally different views of Baidu's position.
The website didn't provide direct downloading services but only links to other websites, which some people said made it not guilty of copyright infringement.
On the other hand, the website gained economic benefits indirectly from the songs, by attracting advertisements.
The 13th Month Record Co has already sent a lawyer's letter to Baidu, demanding 6.85 million yuan (US$1.04 million) in compensation for 137 songs that cost an average 50,000 yuan each to produce.
The website has been offering free download links for years and has been the subject of many similar lawsuits during that time, but the latest row hit the headlines because it closely follows the shutdown of free music and video downloading services by China's biggest file-sharing website, VeryCD.com.
Lu Zhongqiang, CEO of the record company, said it had been preparing for the lawsuit since last October - getting the musicians together, notarizing legal copyrights, holding street concerts and dramas with anti-infringement themes - and was now ready to stand up against Baidu.
Lu said that one of his colleagues had described Baidu as a "deadly parasite that doesn't care about the life of its host (the record companies)." Now it was time for the website to pay, said Lu.
Lu believed the nation's heavy focus on intellectual property rights protection will help them punish the "parasite."
A Baidu official said the company had no comment on the issue.
A report in Wenhui Daily said that Baidu had been sued more than 100 times by record companies, associations, various artists and musicians over similar copyright infringement issues since it started to offer free MP3 searches.
Baidu lost some lawsuits and won others, but the search engine never stopped its free music search service.
According to lawyer Wu Dong, the problem remains because of two totally different views of Baidu's position.
The website didn't provide direct downloading services but only links to other websites, which some people said made it not guilty of copyright infringement.
On the other hand, the website gained economic benefits indirectly from the songs, by attracting advertisements.
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