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Music Industry Prepares to Sue Yahoo China
magicchex writes "According to their chairman, John Kennedy, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) is preparing to sue Yahoo China unless negotiations are agreed upon which satisfy the IFPI. Yahoo China is the second most popular search engine in China, with the frontrunner, Baidu, already involved in an ongoing lawsuit brought by the IFPI. The BBC article is vague in its description of what exactly Yahoo China would be sued for, mentioning that it provides links to pirated music tracks but not explaining this any further other than a statement that 'a simple search on Yahoo China found mp3 files of recent releases for direct download within a few clicks.'"
The federation is also considering using a new Chinese law that came into effect July 1 that fines distributors of illegally copied music, movies and other material over the Internet as much as 100,000 yuan ($12,500). As of today, Chinese search engines operated by Yahoo China and Baidu.com provide links to other Web sites hosting illegally copied songs.
The law says a Web site is jointly liable with the host of the pirated files for infringement ``if it knows or should know that the work, performance or sound or video recording linked to was infringing.''
Apparently there is no such law in Western countries.Yahoo China differs from other search engines (and from other Yahoo editions) by offering a quite comprehensive MP3 search with direct download links at http://music.yahoo.com.cn/
& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=nelly+furt ado&mimetype=all& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=shakira&mi metype=all
Examples?
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch
Search for "posamist silky smooth" (no quotes) and you only get links to some old shit on K5 mentioning the song and band. You won't find the MP3, even though I linked to all their MP3s on my (Google indexed) blog September of last year.
Which is what the RIAA/MPAA want. A Yahoo search DOES return the file, it's the fourth result. What was that about Google not being evil again?
Um. I searched for "posamist silky smooth" (no quotes) on Google, and the third result was this. Is that the MP3 you're talking about, or are there two bands called Posamist who have released songs called Silky Smooth?
And even if I hadn't been able to find the MP3 you named on Google in three clicks, I'm not sure exactly how that would make Google "evil". Evil is when you contribute to human suffering, not when you don't index binary files on your text search engine.