[photopress:5fad.jpg,full,alignright]Baidu recently emerged victorious against online music provider 5fad in an MP3 copyright lawsuit. Guo Zheng, a representative with 5fad’s marketing department, said, ‘We submitted our appeal and are ready to fight to the end.’
Hangzhou-headquartered 5fad had filed a series of lawsuits against Baidu starting in April 2006. Though the complaints differed, they all targeted Baidu’s MP3 search service that enables users to download user-generated songs owned by 5fad.
In the first ruling on the case, the court decided Baidu didn’t hold these music works on its own servers and thus was not responsible.
Guo Zheng said, ‘Baidu’s search engine spiders go directly into our database, even without the aid of third-party Web sites. It then provides these songs, on which we live on, to users for free. The digital music industry doesn’t have a chance to survive if MP3 search exists. If we still lose this time, we’ll consider suing Baidu in the U.S.’
He said 5fad ran into the same situation that seven International music companies, including Warner, EMI and Universal, encountered when they lost a similar case against Baidu in November 2006.
Source: Interfax
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