The good old music industry has won a victory against Yahoo! China in the Chinese courts in relation to the search engine's practice of providing so called "deep links" to illegal sources of music content. As previously reported, the record labels claim that if a search engine provides direct links to illegal sources of music, such as MP3 files, then they should be held liable for copyright violation, even though they themselves do not host or distribute the illegal content.
Of course, it was a case they first pursued against China's number one search engine Baidu. After an initial court success against that search engine company, they lost the case on appeal. However, they are in the process of appealing that appeal decision, and in the meantime began an identical case against Yahoo! China. Their success in the Yahoo! case in the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court this week means the labels are now increasingly confident they will secure a similar ruling against Baidu on a second appeal in that case.
Commenting on the Yahoo! decision, John Kennedy, the boss of the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry, told reporters yesterday: "This is a good news day for the music industry. This judgment will boost the growth of a licensed digital music business in China and provide better protection for intellectual property in this vast, exciting market. The ruling promises to improve the whole environment in which the local and international music industry does business in China".
On the importance of the new case in the Baidu appeal, he continued: "The Beijing Court has confirmed that Yahoo! China has clear responsibility for removing all links to the infringing tracks on its service. Since this is a judgment made under new regulations in China, today's judgment supersedes the previous decision on Baidu and confirms the responsibility of all similar music search providers in China. The judgment gives our members the legal basis to require all music search engines in China to remove infringing links from their service - which we will do. The Court has effectively called time on this type of mass digital piracy in China. Now we must see that this ruling is respected by all those who seek to profit from providing access to music online in this way".
Although the ruling will force Yahoo! China, and probably others, to remove links to illegal sources of music, the music industry did not win anything near the compensation it was seeking for copyright infringement to date. Yahoo! was ordered to pay 200,000 yuan ($27,200) in damages to the eleven labels who pursued the action, somewhat less than the 5.5 million yuan ($713,000) they were claiming.