Music copyright infringement in the People's Republic of China
Encyclopedia
Music copyright infringement in the People's Republic of China is widely regarded as one of the highest in the world. Some reports from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry say about 95 percent or higher of music sales in China
are unauthorized, most coming from downloads of copyrighted music on the Internet
. There are 225 million Internet users in China and no real legitimate online music service, such as iTunes
, that sells copyrighted music.
Some record stores sell unauthorized copies of artists’ music for as little as $4. This has been hard on international and Chinese record industries such as the Music Copyright Society of China
, with revenues dropping 90 percent and new release sales falling about 50 percent since 2005. There are also Chinese-based peer-to-peer
services assisting in large-scale illegal file-sharing, according to the IFPI. In 2005, the IFPI reported more than 350 million unauthorized disks were sold and the physical piracy value totaled about $410 million. Most of these illegal sites or services offer songs for free, generating
income from advertising and other services.
have been in place since 1979 with varying levels of success. With a large amount of copyright infringement
online during the past decade, China's supreme governing body, the State Council of the People's Republic of China
, has introduced streamlined regulations, effective July 1, 2007 that clarifies China's copyright lawregarding the liability of content and service providers involved in the distribution of unauthorized content. However, industry observers note that in many Asian territories, enforcing bodies are understaffed, under funded and have little experience tackling piracy
. Another problem is the amount of illegal Web sites with links to MP3
files, which makes it harder to track and shut down compared to peer-to-peer
file sharing sites.
In the 21st Century, the Chinese government has tried to crackdown online piracy. In 2006, a memorandum of understanding with a number of media industry associations to help fight piracy and protect online copyright was signed. This was after the piracy rate of software in China reached 86 percent and legitimate industries lost some $50 billion to online theft.
In April 2007, the United States government filed action against China with the World Trade Organization
for violating intellectual property rights. The suit was brought because it was believed the Chinese government was not acting against piracy as a criminal offense. The Chinese government said it was making an effort to curb intellectual property
and copyright theft.
and Sogou
. Sogou is the music service of the Web portal Sohu
. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry will represent Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment
(Hong Kong) and Warner Music Hong Kong in a suit against Baidu. Gold Label Entertainment Ltd., backed by EMI Group Ltd., is also bringing a suit against Sogou as well.
The music-industry lawsuits claim $9 million in damages against Baidu and $7.5 million against Sogou. The lawsuit against Baidu is based on 127 copyright music tracks, which are just a small representative sample of the wider infringement. They seek the maximum statutory compensation under Chinese law of $71,000 per track, or about $9 million total. A victory for the plaintiffs could set a precedent in not only China but worldwide when it comes to "deep-linking" files online.
“Baidu is China’s largest violator of music copyrights, generating huge revenue by deliberately providing access to illegal content,” John Kennedy, Chairman and Chief Executive of IFPI, said in a statement in April. “The scale of what it is doing can be summed up by the fact that if the courts were to rule that Baidu should pay maximum statutory damages for all the infringing tracks available through its service it would have to pay many billions of dollars in compensation. That would be an enormous but appropriate price to pay for a company that is failing to take what are quite simple steps to respect the rights of artists and record companies and protect the content of IFPI’s members.”
Baidu and Sohu deny any involvement in the process of obtaining copyright music, as they do no host the illegal files, and their searches only provide lists of other Web sites with links. IFPI blames the search engines because of “deep-linking” that occurs with the Web sites’ music searches, which gives Web users access to illegal music downloads.
As record industry numbers have fallen, Baidu’s revenue doubled in 2007 to $239 million, which comes mostly from online advertising.
The IFPI has filed about 300 lawsuits in Chinese courts and have been victorious in about 90 percent of them. In April 2007, a court ruled that Yahoo!
China's MP3 search service enabled allowed piracy of music, which still hasn't been thoroughly enforced and may be in the process of more litgation. The IFPI lost a similar case months earlier against Baidu when a Beijing
court accepted the company's argument that it's simply providing a link to third-party content.
Baidu
leads the Chinese search engine market. Reports show that 70-75 percent of search engine traffic is through Baidu, and many see the ability to find and copy music through Baidu as a reason. Google has recently partnered with the Yao Ming
-founded online music provider Top100.cn to make some headway in the Chinese market.
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
are unauthorized, most coming from downloads of copyrighted music on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. There are 225 million Internet users in China and no real legitimate online music service, such as iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
, that sells copyrighted music.
Some record stores sell unauthorized copies of artists’ music for as little as $4. This has been hard on international and Chinese record industries such as the Music Copyright Society of China
Music Copyright Society of China
The Music Copyright Society of China is the country's only officially recognized organization for music copyright administration and has issued copyrights for over 14 million music works for approximately 4,000 members....
, with revenues dropping 90 percent and new release sales falling about 50 percent since 2005. There are also Chinese-based peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
services assisting in large-scale illegal file-sharing, according to the IFPI. In 2005, the IFPI reported more than 350 million unauthorized disks were sold and the physical piracy value totaled about $410 million. Most of these illegal sites or services offer songs for free, generating
income from advertising and other services.
Changing Chinese copyright law
Intellectual property in the People's Republic of ChinaIntellectual property in the People's Republic of China
Intellectual property rights have been acknowledged and protected in the People's Republic of China since 1979. The People's Republic of China has acceded to the major international conventions on protection of IPRs...
have been in place since 1979 with varying levels of success. With a large amount of copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
online during the past decade, China's supreme governing body, the State Council of the People's Republic of China
State Council of the People's Republic of China
The State Council of the People's Republic of China , which is largely synonymous with the Central People's Government after 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the People's Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency...
, has introduced streamlined regulations, effective July 1, 2007 that clarifies China's copyright lawregarding the liability of content and service providers involved in the distribution of unauthorized content. However, industry observers note that in many Asian territories, enforcing bodies are understaffed, under funded and have little experience tackling piracy
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
. Another problem is the amount of illegal Web sites with links to MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
files, which makes it harder to track and shut down compared to peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
file sharing sites.
In the 21st Century, the Chinese government has tried to crackdown online piracy. In 2006, a memorandum of understanding with a number of media industry associations to help fight piracy and protect online copyright was signed. This was after the piracy rate of software in China reached 86 percent and legitimate industries lost some $50 billion to online theft.
In April 2007, the United States government filed action against China with the World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which commenced in 1948...
for violating intellectual property rights. The suit was brought because it was believed the Chinese government was not acting against piracy as a criminal offense. The Chinese government said it was making an effort to curb intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
and copyright theft.
Current lawsuits
On April 7, 2007, Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court made the decision to allow suits to be brought against two of China’s leading search engines, BaiduBaidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....
and Sogou
Sogou
Sogou.com is a Chinese search engine which can search text, images, music, and maps. It was launched 4 August 2004 and is owned by Sohu, Inc.. As of April 2010, it has a rank of 121 in Alexa's internet rankings. Sogou provides an index of up to 10 billion web pages. Its major domestic competitor...
. Sogou is the music service of the Web portal Sohu
Sohu
Sohu.com, Inc. is a search engine company headquartered in the Sohu.com Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing, People’s Republic of China. This company and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine, on-line multiplayer gaming and other services. For the fiscal year ended December...
. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry will represent Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment
Sony BMG Music Entertainment
Sony BMG Music Entertainment was a recorded music company, which was a 50–50 joint venture between the Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann AG...
(Hong Kong) and Warner Music Hong Kong in a suit against Baidu. Gold Label Entertainment Ltd., backed by EMI Group Ltd., is also bringing a suit against Sogou as well.
The music-industry lawsuits claim $9 million in damages against Baidu and $7.5 million against Sogou. The lawsuit against Baidu is based on 127 copyright music tracks, which are just a small representative sample of the wider infringement. They seek the maximum statutory compensation under Chinese law of $71,000 per track, or about $9 million total. A victory for the plaintiffs could set a precedent in not only China but worldwide when it comes to "deep-linking" files online.
“Baidu is China’s largest violator of music copyrights, generating huge revenue by deliberately providing access to illegal content,” John Kennedy, Chairman and Chief Executive of IFPI, said in a statement in April. “The scale of what it is doing can be summed up by the fact that if the courts were to rule that Baidu should pay maximum statutory damages for all the infringing tracks available through its service it would have to pay many billions of dollars in compensation. That would be an enormous but appropriate price to pay for a company that is failing to take what are quite simple steps to respect the rights of artists and record companies and protect the content of IFPI’s members.”
Baidu and Sohu deny any involvement in the process of obtaining copyright music, as they do no host the illegal files, and their searches only provide lists of other Web sites with links. IFPI blames the search engines because of “deep-linking” that occurs with the Web sites’ music searches, which gives Web users access to illegal music downloads.
As record industry numbers have fallen, Baidu’s revenue doubled in 2007 to $239 million, which comes mostly from online advertising.
Lawsuits
Despite a culture where theft of intellectual property does not carry a social stigma, trademarks, patents, and lawsuits involving intellectual property are growing in China.The IFPI has filed about 300 lawsuits in Chinese courts and have been victorious in about 90 percent of them. In April 2007, a court ruled that Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
China's MP3 search service enabled allowed piracy of music, which still hasn't been thoroughly enforced and may be in the process of more litgation. The IFPI lost a similar case months earlier against Baidu when a Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
court accepted the company's argument that it's simply providing a link to third-party content.
Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....
leads the Chinese search engine market. Reports show that 70-75 percent of search engine traffic is through Baidu, and many see the ability to find and copy music through Baidu as a reason. Google has recently partnered with the Yao Ming
Yao Ming
Yao Ming is a retired Chinese professional basketball player who last played for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association...
-founded online music provider Top100.cn to make some headway in the Chinese market.
See also
- Intellectual property in the People's Republic of ChinaIntellectual property in the People's Republic of ChinaIntellectual property rights have been acknowledged and protected in the People's Republic of China since 1979. The People's Republic of China has acceded to the major international conventions on protection of IPRs...
- Criticism of intellectual propertyCriticism of intellectual propertyThe societal views on intellectual property include both the positive criticisms and the negative criticisms of intellectual property.Critics of the term "intellectual property" argue that the increased use of this terminology coincided with a more general shift away from thinking about things like...