Search engines based in China contribute to the process, the two entrepreneurs charge, by listing all the free illegal sites. You'll be there for days. We've tried to talk to the Chinese portals and they just make a lot of excuses. Chinese Yahoo, by contrast, will not list sites that have pirated material, because Yahoo in China has to reflect international standards. The motive of the Chinese portals, they say, is to attract additional viewers, so they can charge more money for advertisements.
Record companies have no money to invest in new music.
So the music scene is stagnant. Musicians can't afford to do a tour, and there's absolutely no way they can make a living. Everyone here has to have a second job. Messrs. Strickland and O'Dell have taken upon themselves the formidable challenge of saving China's pop-music industry. They've pleaded with portals, circulated digital antipiracy petitions on their Web site and, in August, sponsored a one-day conference in Beijing on piracy.