International music companies Universal Music Ltd., Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd., and Warner Music Ltd., have filed separate lawsuits against China’s Baidu.com and Sohu.com for promoting music piracy.

Both websites act as portals for searches – music or otherwise – but both sites are popularly used in China for mp3 downloading. Their search engine results include links to websites that offer free download of unlicensed music. Try to open a translated version of the Baidu site and see for yourselves. Personally I didn’t see any popular songs or artists in the search results — even in their top lists.

“We sent notices to Baidu to get them to take down the links and they failed to comply, so we had to sue them,” said the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industries) Asia Regional Director, Leong May Seey.

China is well-known for piracy. Most knock-offs around the world come from China – cellphones, music players, and other electronic gadgets are easily ported into China duplicates. This is because most manufacturers hire Chinese factories for mass production; which in turn makes it easy for “pirates” to copy plans and designs and make their own. This also goes for optical media.

*There were reports that Google will launch an advertising-supported service (surprise, surprise) in China that will offer free music downloads. This will definitely alleviate problems of piracy, but at press time these are still unconfirmed speculation.