Zhongsou loses music piracy lawsuit

Zhongsou, one of China’s largest internet
search engines, has been found guilty of
infringing record companies’ copyrights
by the Copyright Bureau of Hebei province
and Cangzhou city.

The authorities have ordered the company
to stop infringing immediately and pay
the maximum penalty of RMB 100,000
(£7,300), in what marks the first time
that administrative penalties have been
levied on a company running a music
delivery service.

The fine imposed is the largest fine
for copyright infringement in the
history of Hebei province, while three
computer servers belonging to Zhongsou
have also been forfeited.

Zhongsou provides a similar music
delivery service to those offered by
Yahoo China and Baidu, based on
delivering music to their users via
“deep links” to tracks on third party
sites.

This type of service was ruled to
infringe copyright by Chinese civil
courts in December 2007. IFPI Asia
regional director Leong Mayseey
says, “This should send a signal to
other similar infringing music
services. “China has the potential
to be one of the most dynamic digital
music markets in the world, but legal
services cannot compete when
household names like Zhongsou
deliberately break the law, abuse
the rights of others and seek to drive
advertising revenue by providing illegal
content. We cannot tolerate such abuse
of our members’ rights and other
internet companies that are breaking
the law should be warned that we are
coming after them next.”

The lawsuit by 5fad against Baidu
will be ruled on this month.