Last semester I was studying abroad in China when I discovered China’s most popular search engine-Baidu.com. A little background information on Baidu-it is now proclaimed the third largest search engine in the world catering to a large internet audience with numerous services. However the one service that is struggling with other industries the most is its MP3 page, allowing people to search for free legal songs to download. It’s main feature is the comprehensive list of popular Chinese songs, shared by internet providers. China claims that this service does not infringe on any copyright laws, but since it also hosts popular international music, Baidu has been encountering issues with record labels such as Sony BMG and Warner Music. To us, it seems like the case would mean sure loss for Baidu since it hosts pirated music and encourages people to obtain music from there easily instead of buying the cds. However, the result of the case was actually global music labels losing to the lawsuit against Baidu.

In a quote stated by a representative of the International Federation of Phonographic “The verdicts do not reflect the reality that both operators have built their music search businesses on the basis of facilitating mass copyright infringement, to the detriment of artists, producers and all those involved in China’s legitimate music market.” However, Baidu is also working with record labels to share ad revenue and cooperating with these labels to fix the tension between the two parties.

Overall, there is still a lack of information offered by the press. It did not give more details as to how Baidu.com could have won this case-could it be simply that the Chinese law deems it okay? With such a censorship of information, it is hard to research more in-depth in regards to this case.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/164420/chinas_baidu_works_with_labels_on_music_downloads.html

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