A Chinese music website has filed a lawsuit against Baidu.com,
demanding a suspension of its service that allows access to free
music products owned by the plaintiff and 100 million Yuan (US$13
million) in compensation.
5fad.com announced on Wednesday in Hangzhou, the capital of east
China's Zhejiang Province, that Baidu, one of China's largest
Internet search engines, had posted links to websites offering free
playing and downloading of more than 1,000 pieces of its
copyrighted music through a so-called "deep link" function.
Wu Duanping, president of Zhejiang Fanya E-commerce Co. Ltd.,
which owns the website, said his company suffered financial losses
because of Baidu's downloading service. He said that 5fad had sent
dozens of formal notifications to Baidu asking it to suspend the
service, but Baidu had failed to respond.
Beijing High People's Court has accepted the case.
An officer with the media department of Baidu.com reported via a
telephone interview with Xinhua that it was the fifth lawsuit over
illegal MP3 downloading lodged by 5fad.com against Baidu since last
year.
“The music website had withdrawn the charges twice. A Zhejiang
court turned down one case and a Beijing court ruled in favor of
Baidu in a final-instance verdict,” said the officer who declined
to give her name.
She did not rule out the possibility that 5fad was trying to
promote itself by filing charges against Baidu.
She claimed that Baidu had made efforts toward protecting
Internet intellectual property rights.
The case came after a group of international music companies
lost a lawsuit against Baidu last year for similar copyright
infringement accusations.
EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and Universal Music all accused
Baidu of engaging in illegal downloading and playing of music owned
by them without their permission. They demanded the suspension of
its download service and 1.73 million Yuan in compensation.
However, a Beijing intermediate court ruled in favor of Baidu,
which did not constitute an infringement as all the music is
downloaded from web servers of third parties.
(Xinhua News Agency July 19, 2007)
