Baidu: Asked to Pay and Baidu Rolls Over
April 7, 2011
Call it common sense, pragmatism, or a desire to eliminate expensive legal hassles.
First, Tim Geigner at techdirt posted “Recording Industry to Baidu: Look, We Know You Beat Us in Court, but Just Do What We Want Anyway, Mmkay?” Since losing their copyright infringement case in Beijing last year, the recording industry is trying the pretty- please approach. The labels sent a letter through the Financial Times asking that Baidu comply with their copyright demands.
The court decision hinged on the fact that Baidu linked to MP3 files instead of hosting them itself. Recording execs are asking the site to filter audio files out of search results. Geigner thinks the recording industry is being a sore looser, and uses a story about the his brother and the last eclair to make his point.
More pertinently, the writer mentions certain differences between China and the U.S.:
“Never mind the cultural differences that may be coming into play here. Never mind that the nominal GDP for the United States is some thirteen times that of China. We want the Chinese to pay as much for their music as Americans, d**n it, and the way to do that is to get Baidu to voluntarily limit their own search results. . . . So, you see, if Baidu would just filter out the infringing content, relatively poor Chinese citizens would suddenly spend big bucks for music.”
Second, we learned that Baidu was a well behaved giant in “China’s Baidu to Compensate Songwriters for Music Downloads.” In my opinion, the key point in that write up was:
Baidu announced that it had made an agreement with the Music Copyright Society of China to establish a partnership to protect legal digital music, and will pay copyright holders to use their music. This will encompass any song that is downloaded from Baidu’s music search site, said company spokesman Kaiser Kuo.
It’s been said before, but the recording industry would be better served by seeking a way to profit from the new reality rather than fighting it at every turn. Baidu, regardless of motivation, avoided some of the legal hassles that have plagued other online services.
Cynthia Murrell April 7, 2011
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2 Responses to “Baidu: Asked to Pay and Baidu Rolls Over”
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Hello,
i want to say thank you for a great job you’ve done on your blog. I have a software download website and I also
write articles for people to help them
with their computers and software. Is it possible to place this article on your blog as a guest post?
Regards,
Andy G.
Thanks for the mention, Cynthia. The odd part of all of this is how ultimately inconsequential major American labels are likely to be in the Chinese market. To raise all this fuss over what is essentially nothing is, unfortunately, unsurprising…