Yahoo! China sued for alleged copyright breach at Reuters reports that Yahoo China has been sued by Warner Music Group Corp. and other music giants for linking to “unlicensed music.” The case was filed in early January by “11 companies and seeks damages of 5.5 million yuan ($710,686).” In November of last year, music publishers lost a similar case against Chinese search engine Baidu for publishing links to “sites offering illegal music downloads,” with a Beijing court ruling that the service did not constitute an infringement as the music was downloaded from webservers of third parties. Porter Erisma, Yahoo China’s spokesperson said, “Yahoo China respects intellectual property rights and supports the fight against music piracy.”

Postscript: Yahoo China Ordered To Remove Links To Unlicensed Music, Yahoo China will appeal.

Related Topics: Legal: Copyright | Yahoo: Legal | Yahoo: Outside US

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About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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