What do you do if you are a Chinese wireless service provider such as Kongzhong in cut throat competition? You try to add more value to your service such as an upgraded answering tone that used to be tuu…., into the so called color ring back tone (CRBT). This is a bit of a misnomer, because songs, personalized monologues, jokes can replace the answering tone. Read more about this phenomenon, the latest craze and Asian trend, that is called in Chinese Cai Ling here.
Now the Nasdaq listed Kongzhong took a few nice songs such as ‘Two Butterflies, Bei Shui Quing Ge and Chui Yanjing as color ring back tone. The people of music company Bird Man were surprised when they heard their music as Cai Ling without having authorised Kongzhong and sued them.
Beijing Haidian District People’s Court ruled that Kongzhong infringed Bird Man’s copyright by providing CRBT for the songs. Kongzhong was fined 320,000 Yuan.
Source: Pacific Epoch
