Tech Shout!

The music industry’s struggle to combat piracy has led it to enter yet another battle. Wednesday saw music companies rage a legal war against renowned websites Baidu.com and Sohu.com, alleging them of helping illegal online music piracy.

International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) is an organization that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. As per IFPI, on Monday the music companies requested a Beijing court to issue an order asking the two Chinese sites to remove links to important websites that carry unlicensed copies of music, from their search engines.

All the same, making rounds to the court are not new for Baidu. In the past too music companies had dragged the site to court, in which Baidu finally got to the winning side of the fight. But, China later altered its piracy standards and, in 2007, companies even won a similar case against Yahoo’s Chinese division.

Leong May Seey, the IFPI’s Asia regional director said, “We sent notices to Baidu to get them to take down the links and they failed to comply, so we had to sue them.” said. Keeping in mind that Google is also involved in the issue, this time around victory may seem slightly bleak for Baidu.

Now the latest news, as reported by Wall Street Journal is that Google is also in the works tying up with Chinese music companies to offer free downloads. We shall get you that bit after a quick jump.