Alibaba.com Corp (
"We hope they can accept us as a platform where they can put their copyrighted music for consumers to enjoy," Jin Jianhang (
Jin said the companies were in talks with the "biggest international" companies, without identifying them.
Yahoo China, the nation's second-largest search engine, provides links on its Web site to illegally copied music on non-affiliated sites.
An agreement to offer legal music would help Alibaba avoid a lawsuit by the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry on infringement charges.
"We are in talks and we would prefer to come to an amicable arrangement instead of litigation," said Leong May-seey, Asia regional director for the federation, in a telephone interview from Hong Kong.
The phonographic federation -- which represents companies including EMI Group Plc -- plans to sue the companies within "a few weeks," chairman John Kennedy said on July 3.
About 90 percent of all recordings in China are illegal, with sales of pirated music worth about US$400 million annually, according to the group.
Alibaba, based in the eastern city of Hangzhou, wants to retain music services to compete against Baidu.com Inc (
The record companies failed to reach agreement in a June 30 meeting with Baidu, with Kennedy calling a settlement offered by the Chinese company "unacceptable."
The federation has started the process of taking action against Yahoo China and is "on a track to litigation," Kennedy said in a July 3 interview.
"If negotiation can prevent that, then so be it," he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day