BIZCHINA> Photo
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BIZCHINA> Photo
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Copyright payout
(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-04-25 08:57 It said the company will appeal for protection of its own legal rights and also for the development of the whole industry. Xu Yang, Yahoo China's publicity director, said "Baidu.com was cleared of similar charges last year. If any mistake has been made, Baidu made the same one. The argument in both cases is essentially the same." Last November, Baidu.com, one of China's largest internet search engines, was found not guilty in a similar lawsuit launched by seven companies that accused it of helping users to download music illegally. The case was led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). 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. The record companies appealed to a higher court after losing the lawsuit, but the ruling has yet to be made. Baidu argued that the MP3 search engine it provided was the same as other search engines providing links to web pages, news and pictures. It said it searched all music file formats on the internet, such as ".mp3" or ".wav", making no distinction between copyrighted and pirated songs. "If the music companies had won, the whole search engine sector would have ground to a halt," a Baidu spokesman said at the time. Chinese online auction sites operator Alibaba took over Yahoo Inc's China business in 2005, and Yahoo bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba. (For more biz stories, please visit Industries)
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