More than ten music companies including Warner Music, Sony BMG and Universal have filed a joint-legal suit against Alibaba, the current operator of Yahoo China.

Yahoo China provides links to streamable tracks and downloadable music for fans all over the world after an artist’s name is typed in the search engine box. The major labels though appreciating the Chinese market are not happy with the situation. The eleven paintiffs hope to claim damages in the region of 5.5 million yuan (roughly £370,000) for their potential losses and have requested via the courts that Yahoo China should discontinue it’s current copyright infringements.

Presently over 200 songs have been made available for download via the website without copyright permission from the labels. Not only that but ringtones, lyrics and images of the artists.

The case which was filed in January suggested that links to unlicesned music was supporting piracy, which is pretty big in China - a whopping 85% of all confumed music over there is said to be stolen. IFPI Chairman said, “We are surprised and frustrated that they should take this role in China given that they are our partners in other parts of the world.”

Yahoo! were shocked at but have finally accepted the case, but stated that Yahoo! China does respect intellectual property and supports any fights against music piracy. Spokesman for Yahoo, Porter Erisman went on to say, “The courts have clearly established the precedent that search engine operators are not liable for content posted on third-party websites.”

Afterall, anybody can submit their website to a search engine…

Last year a similar case took place where China’s biggest search engine Baidu.com faced charges of helping users download illegal and unlicensed music but the company was cleared after it became apparent the search engine had no control over the websites which hosted the music files.

Negotiations had been held between the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and Yahoo China before any court action was taken but the Chinese web portal had walked away from the talks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under Distro News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.