SHANGHAI (AFP) - Three of the worlds most influential music labels launched fresh legal action against Chinas top Internet search engine Baidu for pirating music files, according to the recording industrys trade body.
In a filing with a Beijing court, Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Hong Kong and Warner Music Hong Kong have demanded that Baidu remove music links they say infringe on their copyrights, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a statement Monday.
"All of the Chinese companies involved operate similar services based on delivering music to their users via deep links to hundreds of thousands of infringing tracks on third-party sites, with the aim of driving their own advertising revenue," IFPI said.
The three firms, which lost a related ruling in December, have, with Gold Label Entertainment, filed a case with fresh piracy claims against Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com and its search engine, Sogou.
Yahoo China also faces proceedings after refusing to comply with a December ruling by the Beijing Higher Peoples Court which confirmed that the company violated Chinese law by committing mass copyright infringement, it said.
"You cannot build partnership on the basis of systemic theft of copyrighted music and that is why we have been forced to take further actions," said John Kennedy, chief of the IFPI.
As Internet usage has soared in Asia in recent years, the music industrys revenue has fallen dramatically, largely due to MP3 downloads from unauthorized sources.
According to the body, more than 99 percent of all music files in China are illegitimate, causing record companies to lose billions of dollars a year.
No comments:
Post a Comment