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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."'"
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."
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
"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."
Yeah! The American way is to kill them at the government's cost.
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.
Large governments do tend to engage in nationalistic hypocracy, however, so I guess this shouldn't be terribly surprising.
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.