• The Associated Press, Wednesday, November 22, 2006 11 AM

Legal reps of the major record companies have been busy recently, Universal Music Group most notably. However, in the first united front mounted by the big four, EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music and UMG collectively sued Chinese search giant Baidu.com for facilitating the illegal download of 137 pieces of music owned by the companies. They lost.

Baidu has a popular MP3 service on its Web site, and the companies demanded that the Web giant compensate them for 1.73 million yuan, or $216,250--not really that much money. It's more likely that the big four were testing the waters of copyright law in China, where piracy is rampant and the government turns a blind eye.

China says its complying with foreign pressure to crack down on illegal downloads, but if it were spending half as much time worrying about U.S. copyright as it did on censorship, then there wouldn't be problem. The ruling from the suit officially stated that Baidu had not infringed on their copyright because the music files were being downloaded from the Web servers of external parties. The big four may appeal the decision; meanwhile, they're going after Yahoo China, which is 40% owned by U.S.-based Yahoo, next.

Read the whole story at The Associated Press »