[photopress:IT_jennifer_lopez.jpg,full,alignright]The ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer. A group of leading international record companies have lost their lawsuit against Baidu.com, for the alleged illegal downloading and sharing of their music.
The seven companies, including EMI, SONY BMG, Warner Music and Universal Music, in 2005, accused Baidu.com of engaging in illegal downloading and playing 137 pieces of music owned by the record companies online without their permission.
They demanded a public apology from Baidu, the suspension of Baidu’s download service and compensation of RMB1.67 million ($226,000).
The People’s High Court of Beijing said in its final ruling Baidu’s service does not constitute an infringement.
Last November, Beijing’s First Intermediate Court also ruled that Baidu’s service, which provides web links to the music, does not constitute an infringement as all the music is downloaded from web servers of third parties.
The record companies appealed to the higher court.
Baidu argued that the MP3 search engine it provided was the same as other search engines providing links to web pages, news and pictures.
Some web servers have put a huge amount of copyrighted music onto the Internet and offered them to millions of netizens without permission from copyright owners.
Baidu said it searched all music file formats through the Internet, such as “.mp3” or “.wav”, making no distinction between copyrighted and pirated songs.
If the other side was anything but the music companies then one might wonder about the ramifications. But this cartel has controlled, and been very successful in controlling, music for many years. And not for the benefit of the artist.
[photopress:It_Louis_Armstrong_1.jpg,full,alignleft]Read the biography of Louis Armstrong (pictured here) and weep at how much money the mercenary music industry robbed from the greatest trumpet player of them all. He was still working for much needed money when he died.
Now Baidu has won.
In our illustration Jennifer Lopez is complaining she has been pirated by a lot of Chinese netizens. At least, that is what the writer thinks she is saying.
Source: China View
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