Profiles

Musician sues Web for offering free downloads

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-04-27 11:09

Musician Chen Tong is suing the Website www.mop.com for stealing one of his songs in what is set to become a controversial court case.

Chen Tong [baidu]

The suit was filed at Haidian District court in Beijing yesterday, which was also World Intellectual Property Day.

"The suit is not just for my personal interest, but the whole music community, whose livelihoods depend on the protection of their intellectual property," Chen said.

A pioneer of Chinese pop music, he composed the music for Zhang Yimou's Olympic video presentation. Beijing ended up winning the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games. He also produced a dozen singing stars.

Chen claims he was invited to compose music for the TV series "Shen Diao Xia Lu," which was adapted from Jin Yong's martial arts fiction. Zhang Liangying, a singer from last year's "Super Girl," a television show similar to "American Idol," was invited to perform the theme song "Second to None."

Chen wrote the song especially for Zhang and produced it in his studio.

Chen agreed to give DoFala.com, a music Website, exclusive broadcast and download rights. Under the agreement, DoFala was to pay Chen a fixed fee of 40,000 yuan (US$5,000), and a royalty of 0.5 yuan for each download.

But DoFala canceled the deal since the song was available to download on Mop.com.

Mop.com canceled the download service after Chen made enquiries, but users could still listen to "Second to None" online. A search of Mop.com shows the song has been broadcast and downloaded more than 100,000 times.

"Mop.com has obviously infringed the musician's intellectual property rights," said Wei Yanliang, a senior scholar with the State Intellectual Property Office, who is acting as Chen's agent free of charge.

Huang Yunquan, DoFala.com's chief executive, said the song was picked up by other Websites as soon as DoFala published it.

"Few paid attention to our statement that the song was exclusive," Huang said, adding that the company contacted other Websites and told them DoFala.com had exclusive rights to the song.

"Some small Websites immediately canceled the song and apologized, but a few bigger ones ignored the warning."

Huang was also worried about Web 2.0, a technology allowing users to provide content to Web operators. "It is designed to lower the costs of operators, but who can guarantee the content from surfers has been legally obtained?"