EMI ends lawsuit, partners with Baidu

Music group EMI announced Tuesday that it would end its legal battle with Baidu.com and go into partnership with the Chinese search engine, the Wall Street Journal reported. Under the agreement, EMI-owned songs will be streamed for free on Baidu music-search web pages, accompanied by onscreen advertisements. The two companies will share the revenue. EMI and six other music groups took legal action against Baidu in 2005 on the grounds that the search engine was violating copyright laws by providing links to unlicensed MP3 versions of songs on other sites. Last November, a Chinese court backed Baidu's argument that, because it doesn't provide the files for download itself, it isn't doing anything wrong. The case is on appeal but EMI has said it won't participate in this. Baidu and EMI have also agreed to explore ad-driven music download services.