Three of the world's most influential music labels launched fresh legal action against China's top Internet search engine Baidu (
In a filing with a Beijing court, Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Hong Kong and Warner Music Hong Kong have demanded that Baidu remove music links they say infringe on their copyrights, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said in a statement on Monday.
"All of the Chinese companies involved operate similar services based on delivering music to their users via `deep links' to hundreds of thousands of infringing tracks on third-party sites, with the aim of driving their own advertising revenue," IFPI said.
The three firms, which lost a related ruling in December, have, with Gold Label Entertainment, filed a case with fresh piracy claims against Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com (
Yahoo China also faces proceedings after refusing to comply with a December ruling by the Beijing Higher People's Court which confirmed that the firm had committed mass copyright violations, it said.
The decision to file a new case was based on the court's ruling on Yahoo China, which highlighted a recent change in China's Internet copyright regulations, a spokesman for the IFPI in London said yesterday.
"The music industry in China wants partnership with the technology companies," IFPI chief John Kennedy said.
"But you cannot build partnership on the basis of systemic theft of copyrighted music and that is why we have been forced to take further actions," he said in the statement.
A senior manager with Baidu said he was not aware of the case.
As Internet usage has soared in Asia in recent years, the music industry's revenue has fallen dramatically, largely as a result of MP3 downloads from unauthorized sources.
The industry body said more than 99 percent of all music files in China are illegitimate, causing record billions in losses.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
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
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li