The liability of search engines for the illegal content their services point to is a growing area in the record industry's fight against online piracy, and no more than in China, where the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry is in legal dispute with the two biggest search engine companies on that very issue. The IFPI hope that new Chinese laws on the issue will help them win their case there.
As previously reported, the IFPI has been in dispute with China's largest search engine, Baidu.com, for over a year. It objects in particular to Baidu's MP3 search function which enables people to search for music files online - many of the music files listed in those searches come from illegal sources. The record industry won a civil case against Baidu in the Chinese courts last year, but the company is appealing that ruling and in the meantime attempts to reach an out of court settlement have proved unsuccessful.
This week the record label trade body announced it is also suing Yahoo China over the same issue - the Chinese version of the global search engine being owned 40% by Yahoo Corp. Lawyers for the record labels also say they hope to utilise new Chinese laws, that came into effect at the weekend, to aid their battle against the search engines. Those laws make it a criminal offence for search engines to knowingly link to illegal sources of content. For the search engines, the penalties of losing a criminal case are much higher than in a civil trial.
Commenting on the cases against the Chinese search engines, IFPI chief John Kennedy told reporters yesterday: "We've started the process, and as far as we're concerned we're on a track to litigation. If negotiation can prevent that, then so be it. It's quite strange to see entities quoted on public stock exchanges trading with such blatant infringement that could get [them] a huge damages award. If I was a chief executive, I'd be nervous. If I was a shareholder, I'd be nervous."
Phew, tough talking. I'm not a chief executive or a shareholder, but I'm a bit nervous all the same.