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Yahoo! China lost a lawsuit filed by music industry
giants including Warner Music for allegedly playing and providing
links to unlicensed music, state media reported Wednesday.
A Beijing court ordered Yahoo! China to pay about 200,000 yuan
(26,000 dollars) in damages for assisting downloads of unlicensed
music in other websites and delete 229 links to free songs, the
China Business News said.
Yahoo! China plans to file an appeal, according to a statement by
the company, a unit of Chinese online auction sites operator Alibaba,
in which Yahoo! has a 40-percent stake.
The court said Yahoo! China helped users to listen to and download
unlicensed music with its search engine but added that it is the
third-party Web sites, not Yahoo China, that were mainly responsible
for distribution of these songs.
"It is technically impractical for search engines to delete
links to all unlicensed music," Yahoo China spokesman Xu Yang
told AFP by telephone.
"We will definitely stress this point in the appeal as we
cannot discern between licensed and unlicensed ones by technical
methods," he said, referring to the ruling by Beijing Second
Intermediary Court.
Earlier this year, eleven companies including Warner Music, EMI and
Sony BMG Music Entertainment sued Yahoo! China for about 5.5 million
yuan (710,000 dollar) in damages alleging it played and offered
links to unlicensed music.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an
industrial group combating piracy which filed the case on behalf of
the eleven firms, welcomed the ruling.
"The Beijing court has confirmed that Yahoo! China has clear
responsibility for removing all links to the infringing tracks on
its service," John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of
IFPI, said in an email.
In November, Chinese Internet search engine Baidu.com
won a similar lawsuit launched by IFPI charging Baidu with helping
users to download music illegally.
"Today's judgment supersedes the previous decision on Baidu and
confirms the responsibility of all similar music search providers in
China," said Kennedy.
-- AFP
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