Slashdot Mirror
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."'"
Yahoo earned this. They bent over backwards to do business with China, and now they're paying the karmic price. Personally, after what they did to those journalists and bloggers, I love it.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
Hm, gee, I wonder if this same impossible standard will be applied to non-foreign companies in China.
My guess is "no."
Man, I thought that headline was "Yahoo! Slammed Over Privacy By Chinese Court", and I was really confused.
This is great news. I predict this law will end all copyright violations of photographs of the Tiananmen Square protests.
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.
When in China, do as the Chinese do...
Shoot people and charge their families for the bullet?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I don't want to get into a semantic argument about the definition of "irony", but it sure seems "ironic" that China, arguably the piracy capital of the world, is labasting a search company about piracy concerns.
"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."
Dunno but from what I've seen Yahoo China has a "warez search" option.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
"Your aunt's cousin's mother's friend's gardener's dog's best friend's owner downloaded watched a movie she's not suppose to. You're going to prison!!!"
I also think we need to sue Toyota for all the car accidents in the world, the fire/matches for all the destruction in Southern California and god for any and all wars/plagues after 0 BC... WTF?!?
But yeah, this isn't surprising from a country that had a campaign to kill rice eating birds... only to have the locusts devastate their crops the next year.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
Yeah! The American way is to kill them at the government's cost.
Sure. Clamping down on internet access by their citizens (while forcing companies like Yahoo! to pay for it and take some of the blame) is not at all what the Chinese government wants. If you believe that, I have a firewall I'd like to sell you cheap that blocks all objectionable content (and you get to define objectionable).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
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.
"We are disappointed that the court did not find Baidu liable," Kennedy said in a statement. "But that judgment was about Baidu's actions in the past, under an old law that is no longer in force. Baidu should now prepare to have its actions judged under the new law. We are confident a court would hold Baidu liable as it has Yahoo China."
So maybe Baidu has fixed their acts?
Oh... wait... is Baidu.com a Chinese company? That's hard to say because the fact is most successful Chinese Internet companies, including alibaba.com, which was funded by Softbank and Yahoo and which now owns Yahoo China, are funded and run by western VCs. But then that would answer your concern. Who cares the thousands of little real Chinese websites like the pirate DVD sellers across streets in China.
in the US. Wasn't the RIAA claiming that ISPs "make available" their copyrighted materials via search results? (If i remember correctly that was slapped down in US court or countered via actual legislation)
This basically settles the opinion IMO that the RIAA's views on copyright infringement is akin to that of the Chinese government.
SCARY!
Now included with your Yahoo search results in China: 10 years hard labor!
While here in the states Yahoo just sells rebranded AT&T broadband, in Asia, Yahoo is a major broadband provider.
I don't know about China specifically, but they're one of the faster, more reliable broadband services in Japan, and offer something not unlike Verizon FiOS. Including a broadband television service.
--Rachel
"It's bad enough your "leader" has declared himself an Internet expert. And when he visited the US some time ago, played a round of golf, and then declared to his people he made 18 holes-in one I will never take your country, let alone your judicial system seriously while you spew stupid bullshit like this."
How do you expect anyone to take YOU seriously when you don't even know the difference between N. Korea and China. The leader you are thinking of is Kim Jong Il of North Korea. He had his nation's media report that he made many holes in one on a single round on his 1st attempt at golfing...
http://www.anyonefortee.com/Shots/Kim.html
I have to return some videotapes...
I'm from China. According to my knowledge (yes I may be wrong) there is a corrupted and politics-oriented jurisdiction system in China but these judges in Beijing are simply performing the practice of Foolishness, which is very unusual.
And the "new" copyright law... What the fuck is that? I'm not a lawyer but I think I'll be digging in the library for a while in search of the new law. OK if there is really such a piece of crap in our laws there must be some fucking shit in the head of the congressmen or are they using a M$-made statistics software for the put-up-your-hand-and-say-yes-now-please-or-you-are-fucked National Congress?
Yes this law that asks internet search providers to be liable to the contents of their search results, if exists, is suicidal. No matter what's the reason for such a law come into being it would sooner or later kill the whole search engine industry. By then, nobody can perform Web-searches any more, including those fucking law makers themselves. Students and teachers in colleges may no longer search Google scholar, Scirus or even use services like JSTOR or ProQuest. Businesses may no longer find each other over the internet. Communist party may no longer poison or censor Web applications (contributing further to the rate of unemployment).
Maybe I'm wrong but I would still say that there's no reason for such a law to exist, even if we consider the very nature of the Chinese government. Perhaps tomorrow my library would tell me "sorry we no longer provide book search services because we can't be liable of the search results. Those books may contain non-communism-compliant material or other law-infringing contents."
Nuts.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Er, actually this is happening. Except that say that its because the journalist's source is a terrorist and the journalist must reveal the source. Some have been held without trial indefinitely.
There have been 130,000 deaths in Iraq since the US invaded. The US has dropped cluster bombs on homes. The US dropped Agent Orange on Vietnam, the effects of which are still felt today. The US is the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon on a civilian population. We justified the attacks on civilian populations simply because they were "the enemy" and "they wont surrender". The US used small pox against its own indigenous population.
Might want to open your eyes before riding that high horse. I happen to think that the US is the greatest nation in the world, and the US constitution the greatest human work in the world, but lets be honest, anything involving humans and power is going to get fucked up.
You haven't looked at the US balance of payment figures lately have you? Nor what China does with all those dollars it gets?
If it turned its dollars into yuan, the yuan would get too expensive, so instead they look for dollar-based things to buy. Last I checked they were flooding the US credit market, by supporting all this government spending.
If we suddenly embargoed china, we'd be fucked. Though, honestly, we're just postponing the inevitable.
Large governments do tend to engage in nationalistic hypocracy, however, so I guess this shouldn't be terribly surprising.
Why is this marked '+5 insightful' when the post specifically says "I don't know about China specifically"...which makes the post irrelevant. The post is at best 'interesting'.
FWIW, I've lived in China for several years and haven't heard of any internet access service provided by Yahoo!. All broadband access I've heard of is provided by CNC, if not directly then by a reseller of some kind.
Max.
I know of just one store now, and that is far from any hotels in the middle of an area populated mostly by Koreans. Furthermore, I've recently seen some *real* DVDs in that store. Of course, I don't *know* they're real, and I've not bought any because they're horrendously expensive (compared to salaries here). Even if I did buy them, I still don't know they're real - though I could probably tell to some degree since the English spelling/grammar/etc would be correct (well, it'd be US spelling, but still), and they would actually work without skipping...but who knows for sure? If there's one thing the Chinese are best at in the world (and there isn't just one thing, I'm sure), it's faking stuff and other scams/etc. They're really quite clever.
Of course, you can still buy them on the streets, but the few I've bought from them have been really poor quality (often a camcorder in a cinema).
Max.
No, the clothing in particular is sold only as a tourist attraction. I'd say that the names and appearance aren't even slightly modified either - they're exactly the same, except that they don't last too long (perhaps they're 'seconds' or have failed quality control).
Max.