Tech Shout!

Yahoo! China’s music search engine has turned up as bad news for the music industry. Possible legal action against Yahoo!, the global Web portal may soon be on the cards for those belonging to the music industry. Apparently, Yahoo! China’s music pages directly link to unlicensed downloads and streams of songs by domestic as well as international artists.

Recently, Baidu.com, a market-leading website for online music was sued as this site led to pages filled with unlicensed music. Both the sites, Yahoo! China and Baidu had links on their WebPages, which directly triggered a download of music hosted by sites that appear to be unaffiliated with them.

The most apparent and obvious example of copyright infringement on the Yahoo! China web site include deep links to music by the Beatles. However, the legendary band’s catalog has never ever been licensed to a digital service.

Yahoo’s China management denies that such links are examples of copyright violations. Yahoo “is a directory of what’s on the Web,” says Porter Erisman, international marketing VP of Beijing-based Alibaba International, the company that manages Yahoo China. Erisman says that if content is streaming or being downloaded from another site, such violations would be the responsibility of that site. “Yahoo China doesn’t actually post the works which (users) are downloading,” Erisman says.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPA) is now negotiating with Yahoo! China, which happens to be the second largest search engine in China, in order to avoid legal proceeding. However the IFPI is most likely to go ahead with the lawsuit.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries includes a host of members from the music industry such as EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music. Previously Baidu.com was also sued by the IFPI for similar reasons last year.

The IFPI declined to say how much it seeks for damages, but has vowed to tackle this popular “culture of music piracy”.