After years of frustration fighting illegal downloads of music content over the Internet, Ruuben van den Heuvel, vice president of digital business Asia at Sony BMG Music Entertainment, said the major music companies are more willing to take violators to court.
These included intermediaries such as Baidu.com and other Internet companies that provide the search engine for MP3 downloads.
``Illegal download of music is wrong. Search engines [for MP3 downloads] help people to do that,'' said van den Heuvel.
The music companies are getting help inside China .
Entrepreneur Wu Jun's R2G, formed with partners 18 months ago, helps the companies to distribute their content digitally on the Internet or through mobile phone services in China .
R2G also monitors the Internet for copyright violations and helps the music companies become accustomed to undertaking prosecutions.
Its services come as the central government is increasingly cracking down on rampant unauthorized downloads of songs, ring tones, movies and other intellectual properties over the Internet.
It passed a new law in the spring that imposes fines on Web sites that knowingly offer content illegally. The Beijing-based company has so far signed up 20 mainland music companies and international powerhouses such as Universal Music and Sony BMG.
Its system searches all Web sites for copyright violations.
Upon detecting a potential copyright violation, R2G warns those involved.
Most of the offenders would either pay up to get the proper copyright or delete the content, said Wu.
R2G would take legal action against the remainder on behalf of its clients, said Wu, who is R2G chief executive.
``The ultimate goal is make people realize [copyright infringement] doesn't pay,'' said Wu, ``We can detect any violations within three weeks.''
Recently, Netease, one of the country's leading Internet portals, suspended its MP3 search service, saying that ``most of the music offered over the Internet had no [proper] copyright.''
Baidu, the leading mainland search engine, still offers an MP3 search service despite being sued by Shanghai Busheng Music Culture Media for allowing unauthorized downloads of 53 songs.
According to Ye Zhijian, a lawyer at T&C Law Firm in Hangzhou , a new case has been filed in Shanghai over 20 more songs.
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