Baidu: New Chinese music industry lawsuit
Baidu.com is facing another lawsuit over their controversial music search service - and this time it hasn’t come from the global music industry.
The new action, jointly filed by two of China’s largest music associations, accuses the Beijing-based search engine of mass infringement of local artists’ copyright.
Chinese music distributor R2G and the Music Copyright Society of China, which represents the interests of artists, initiated the lawsuit in Beijing in January 2008, calling for Baidu to immediately put a stop to their free MP3 search service and pay compensation to local artists and record labels.
In recent years Baidu’s music search has caught the attention of the global music industry, and only last month Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG asked for another court order instructing the company to remove tracks by their artists from the service.
Given that free music search is reported to be a key factor in Baidu’s continuing success in the Chinese market (Google China are launching a licensed version to help them compete), the firm has been reluctant to back down.
Lower tolerance to Internet piracy
Although Baidu has previously won court battles over their music service, China has signalled to the West that it will take harsher action over Internet piracy, which some estimates suggest accounts for 99 percent of the Chinese music market.
A statement from R2G and the Music Copyright Society of China said that Baidu was taking advantage of the relative lack of sophistication of the China music industry to build market share and increase advertising income.
Baidu, who currently account for approximately 60 percent of the Chinese search engine market, were not available to comment.
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