Is Yahoo! at it Again?
Do you remember when I posted an article about Yahoo! aiding communist China by providing information that helped the government jail a man there for speaking out about democracy? The article was originally from The Martian Anthropologist who referenced this article from Reuters.
At the time there was a lot of discussion and criticism here and on other blogs both for and against Yahoo!. Some even suggested that Yahoo! had done exactly what it was morally and legally obligated to do by upholding the laws of the country in which it was doing business.
Well, according to this article on Reuters about an hour ago, TAIPEI, China Yahoo!’s music search engine is up to some law breaking of its own.
In a situation that seems to mirror that of market-leading — and already sued — local portal http://www.baidu.com, Yahoo China’s music pages link directly to unlicensed downloads and streams of songs by domestic and international artists.
“Deep linking,” as the practice is known, differs from sending Web searchers to other pages that may host unlicensed music. Instead, the links on Baidu and Yahoo directly trigger a download of music hosted by sites that appear to be unaffiliated with Yahoo.
The most obvious examples of apparent copyright infringement on the Yahoo China site include deep links to music by the Beatles. The band’s catalog has never been licensed to a digital service. This is similar to http://www.top100.cn, a Chinese music Web site that claimed legitimacy but sold unlicensed music.
Yahoo! claims that these “deep links” are merely a catalog of what’s out there on the internet, and are not in violation of copyright laws on the part of Yahoo!. However, pages with Yahoo! formatting bearing the Yahoo! logo are set up to download or stream these very same music files through direct links. The files for download and for streaming appear to be hosted by sources other than Yahoo! itself.
Chinese courts have ruled against deep linking in seemingly similar cases. Baidu was found guilty of copyright infringement by the Beijing People’s Local Court September 16, 2005, in a case brought by Shanghai Bu-sheng Music Culture Media, the local distributor for EMI. Baidu has appealed the ruling, and appears to continue to post copyright-infringing links.
In addition to music files, Ringtones of unlicensed music were available for download from another site bearing the Yahoo! name and logo. Be sure to read this entire article for all the information. There are 2 pages.
UPDATE: On the other side of the spectrum, Google has stopped storing personal information of its visitors from china so that it cannot be used to incriminate them.
Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, China, Martian Anthropologist, Reuters, Yahoo, TAIPEI, music, downloads, streams, songs, Deep linking, unlicensed, Baidu, Beatles, EMI, Ringtones
Interesting post! Thanks for pointing it out to me.
It’s pretty crazy all the things that go on that don’t get news coverage.
It is crazy, and maddening. And it’s happening all the time!
Hey, I love your site, zombie. Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks!