China's NCAC Calls on Internet Giants to Protect Online Music Copyrights
NCAC, 9/12/17
The National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) has announced that it recently conducted interviews to discuss online music copyright issues with the heads of Tencent's (0700.HK) Tencent Music Entertainment Group, Alibaba Group's (NYSE: BABA) Ali Music, NetEase's (Nasdaq: NTES) NetEase Cloud Music, and Baidu's (Nasdaq: BIDU) Taihe Music Culture Development. An NCAC spokesperson emphasized that online music service providers must earnestly uphold the commitments they made in a 2015 declaration of self-discipline regarding online music copyright protection. This includes combatting all types of copyright violations and refraining from disseminating online music without the permission of the copyright holder.
The NCAC spokesperson pointed out that since the 2015 campaign launched by NCAC to reform industry practices related to online music copyrights, online music service providers have taken down over 2.2 mln unauthorized songs and signed the aforementioned self-discipline declaration. However, the current online music copyright market is still experiencing problems such as the driving up of copyright authorization fees, the stealing of exclusive copyrights, and unauthorized use of music.
Editors' Note: NCAC's announcement comes on the same day that two of China's largest internet firms unveiled a new agreement to share music copyrights with each other (see Alibaba, Tencent Forge Deal on Music Copyright Swapping, MD 9/12/17 issue). For more background on regulation of online music copyrights in China, please see China to Include Online Music Services under Copyright Supervision, MD 4/27/15 issue, and China Tightens Regulation of Unlicensed Online Music Content, MD 8/04/15 issue.
Keywords: mobile music wireless Internet regulation Baidu online music copyright Tencent National Copyright Administration 0700.HK BIDU NTES Alibaba Group BABA Taihe Music Tencent Music Tencent Music Entertainment AliMusic