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Yahoo! Slammed Over Piracy By Chinese Court
An anonymous reader writes "Setting a precedent likely to have far-ranging consequences, a Chinese court has once again lambasted Yahoo! China over piracy concerns. The search firm is (according to the court) infringing on intellectual property rights by allowing copyrighted materials to be downloaded from the internet via search results. 'John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, or IFPI, said in a statement Thursday. "By confirming that Yahoo China's service violates copyright under new Chinese laws, the Beijing court has effectively set the standard for Internet companies throughout the country."'"
Hm, gee, I wonder if this same impossible standard will be applied to non-foreign companies in China.
My guess is "no."
It is basically useless to run a search engine in China. If the search engine has to be responsible for ensuring that content it brings up is in compliance with each every law, sane or crazy, then the data set it opens up to the user will essentially be hacked into one tiny piece. This is perfect for big content and information repressing regimes. The internet is their biggest fear, a decentralized, cheap means of distributing information. If you can narrow its scope, as big content or an information repressing regime, you win.
"By confirming that Yahoo China's service violates copyright under new Chinese laws, the Beijing court has effectively set the standard for Internet companies throughout the country."
Translation: "The government has staked its claim. It will control the flow of information on the web across the board. This is just a small step."
I got a catholic block.
"A Chinese court has ruled that Chinese companies do not like competition from American companies so they are going to tar Alibaba.com with the "pirate" brush until Yahoo! divests the company. Then they'll ignore the complaints against Alibaba.com."
Talk about calling the kettle black. China is probably the largest source of piracy. They really should handle the problem of people selling pirate CDs and DVDs before going after Yahoo for indexing some warez site.
Large governments do tend to engage in nationalistic hypocracy, however, so I guess this shouldn't be terribly surprising.