China to crack down on illegal music download

September 24, 2005
This article is from the People’s Daily Online, the online, English version of the Chinese national newspaper. The author writes about the first lawsuit brought against a Search Engine Website by a record company. The record company claims that the search engine Baidu.com should not provide websites that allow illegal file sharing and downloading in their database. Baidu lost their first trial, but have decided to appeal to a higher court in the hopes of repealing the 10,000 dollar fine. However, the author of this article does not believe their chances of winning are high, “Xu Chao from the State Copyright Bureau says search engine companies should be held responsible if they know songs belong to certain copyright owners yet still provide them.”

The article is rather short, but to the point. Based on the Chinese State Copyright Bureau’s point of view, Baidu is out of luck and nobody is safe from legal action. The idea that a website provider can be targeted for the illegal activity of its users is yet another development in the war against file sharing. I personally cannot decide which method of combating file sharing is better. Hit up the search engines for bringing the illegal website to the user, or fine the user when they actually do something wrong. I do not want to say that websites should not maintain a level of responsibility and integrity, because the functionality of the internet would be at stake. However, to what degree should search engines be required to filter their results? Doesn’t that come close to censuring the internet? How can a search engine, who devotes its existence to providing an accurate index of the World Wide Web’s listing, exclude certain sites because they do not uphold the law?

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200509/24/eng20050924_210629.html