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Music Industry Prepares to Sue Yahoo China

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yahouch dept.

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.'"

9 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. I'm sure... by corychristison · · Score: 5, Interesting
    'a simple search on Yahoo China found mp3 files of recent releases for direct download within a few clicks.'
    I'm sure a search on most forms of search engines would produce similar results. Why does Yahoo China get the can for this?
    1. Re:I'm sure... by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You would be surprised.
      It used to be the case, but now it seems to be getting harder (at least on google)
      Theres more spam and lyrics and legal sites coming up tops.

      By the time you find anything your on page 97 and searching in foreign languages on random domains.

      I just gave an example of looking for a specific ebook and not managing to find it by direct filename and other common things on google, but managing to get it very easily from yahoo.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    2. Re:I'm sure... by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Just to play devil's advocate...

      If Yahoo China can supress results based on edicts from the "mean old Chinese government," perhaps the music industry is going to say "Well now, you clealy CAN filter the results if you want to or are forced to. We want you to filter out links to illgotten content that we own. If you don't, you're contributing to the problem and have some liability."

      That's the flip side of caving in to search engine filtering. The slope is quite slippery....

    3. Re:I'm sure... by xtracto · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Behold the power of the copyright infringing search engine called GOOGLE

      My question is, isnt Yahoo! USA the same company as Yahoo! China? cant they "provide" their lawyers force?

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    4. Re:I'm sure... by sm62704 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You can't even find ligitimate MP3s on Google.

      Try to find this file. It's a song by my friends Posamist named "Silky Smooth".

      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?

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    5. Re:I'm sure... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Apparently there is no such law in Western countries.

      For good reason, but there's a lot of interest here in the U.S. to try and end that immunity. Of course, if they do succeed in making engines responsible for linked content it will simply end search engines, which wouldn't bother some people one bit. China's government is in the unenviable position of wanting all the benefits of free flow of information provided by search without the perceived liabilities. What's unfortunate is that their perceptions of what is acceptable and what is not are being colored by groups whose interests are not aligned with what is best for China, the United States, or any other forward-looking industrial power.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  2. In other news by giorgiofr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Search engines can be used to search for possibly illegal stuff.
    Mail can be used to send possibly illegal objects.
    Roads can be used to go to some possibily illegal destination.
    Weapons can be used to kill someone, possibly in an illegal way.
    Phones can be used to call someone and say possibily illegal things.

    Unless we want to take care of all the above mentioned "problems", I don't see why we should be concerned with search engines and specifically single them out.
    Oh wait, they have lotsa money. Now I understand.

    --
    Global warming is a cube.
  3. I noticed this on yahoo uk by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was looking for a pdb (ebook) of snowcrash recently and whilst its getting harder to find things using google, yahoo came up with results for it.

    Now this just isn't right, can I sue google for NOT finding the things I'm looking for?

    Speaking of lawsuits for stupid things, can I sue yahoo myself for their stupid new frontpage?

    I thought the slash redesign was a bit wonky, but the yahoo one actually does make my eyes bleed, it keeps sliding downwards under some java shit which makes me feel sick. Anyway, I've changed homepage now so bye bye yahoo its been good knowing ya.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  4. Unbelievable by Linux_ho · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Yahoo just helped us find like a dozen music pirates in about ten minutes. Thanks, Yahoo! Oh hey, it's kinda tricky to track down these international guys. Bad Yahoo! Bad Bad Yahoo!" If all the search engines colluded with illegal content distributors by hiding their stashes, these morons (and law enforcement) would have to write their own search engines to find them.

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    include $sig;
    1;