China's first regulation on on-line copyright, implemented on July 1, will protect search engine operators from copyright infringement accusations and give them a legal status, say experts.

"Search engines providing links can be exempted from copyright infringement of the content under the regulation," said Wang Bin, secretary general of on-line copyright alliance of Internet Society of China.

Last September, seven record companies accused Baidu.com, the largest Chinese search engine, of offering pirated free downloads of their songs, triggering a spate of legal cases against search engine operators.

However, the new regulation stipulates that Internet service providers which merely offer search services and links are not liable for links to pirated content if they delete the links after being informed by the copyright owners. If the search engines continue to provide links to pirated content, they take on the infringement responsibility along with the pirate websites.

"It means search engines would not be directly responsible for pirated products they provide links to," said Wang.

Government statistics show that China has over 111 million Internet users and Internet companies are beginning to focus on providing sound and image content.

"Copyright has become a prominent issue for websites and laws and regulations are needed to guarantee the websites' legal right to provide content," said Wang.

He believed the new regulation would encourage Internet content providers to take more serious consideration of intellectual property rights protection.

Baidu.com welcomed the new regulation and believed it would give search engines a legal status and help promote cooperation with record companies.

"Baidu hopes to have mutually beneficial cooperation with record companies and protection of on-line copyright needs coordination of the whole industrial chain," said Wang Dong, brand and marketing director of Baidu.

Music searches are Baidu's most popular service after website searches. Baidu has been active in participating in the industrial chain of digital music. Last October, it launched a music alliance and the number of record companies in the alliance has increased from the original six to 30.

The regulation would bring opportunities to search engines as well as responsibilities, said He Qifeng, an analyst with the China Center for Information Industry Development.

"It lays a framework for Internet service providers and clarifies their liabilities," said He.

But the regulation was hard to implement to some extent, He said. Due to the large number of pirate websites, copyright owners would find it difficult to list them all, and even if they could, search engines might not want to delete all the sites if it affected search results, said He.

"Search engines may have a dilemma then," said He.

If copyright owners failed to inform the website and chose immediate legal action, the regulation gave no guidance to courts on how to rule in such cases, said Wang.

He said the on-line copyright alliance would discuss the issue with Internet companies, judicial and legislative departments.