Record industry takes on Yahoo! China

By Alun Williams

Posted on 5 Jul 2006 at 13:16

Following in the wake of the BPI's legal pursual of AllofMP3.com, the record industry has its sights on Yahoo! China.

The international music industry body, the IFPI, is set to sue the Chinese arm of the Internet search giant, according to the BBC.

While negotiations are still ongoing to prevent legal action, it reports, the organisation could seek an unspecified amount for damages.

The chairman of the IFPI, John Kennedy is quoted as saying that the legal process has started and the organisation is on track to start litigation.

At issue is the provision of links to pirated content - the ease by which MP3 files of recent music releases can be downloaded. While it may seem a wide focus of attack to target the search engine for the sites discovered through it, the IFPI has previously pursued Baidu, often described as the Chinese Google.

Yahoo! China, however, has defended itself, claiming it is working within the law and that there is a process for removing items from the site that violate intellectual property rights.

Alibaba.com operates and manages the Yahoo! China business, a Yahoo! spokesperson told us, with Yahoo! holding a 40 per cent stake in Yahoo! China.

Members of the IFPI include the major music labels, such as include EMI, Sony BMG and Warner Music. It was in action recently, initiating 2,000 new lawsuits targeting alleged file sharers across 10 countries (including Hong Kong but not China). The lawsuits focused on users of all the major p2p networks, including FastTrack (Kazaa) and Gnutella (BearShare).