Cut negative stories, Baidu demands: source
p2pnet news | Freedom:- Media sites in China say Baidu wants them to delete recent negative reports about the company’s alleged mass-scale music piracy, a source who prefers to remain anonymous has told p2pnet.
Baidu.com, China’s most used search engine, has been violating copyrights, claims Qu Jingming, director-general of the Music Copyright Society of China, said a p2pnet story last month.
It’s said to have been providing free on-line song downloading services, according to china.org.cn.
Now, with the latest round of lawsuits brought by the Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC) and R2G against Baidu, the company, “has been under increasing pressure to come clean but some of its actions show it to be playing dirty,” says a source.
In the latest salvo, Baidu was accused of manipulating its music search results and, “it has come to light that Baidu has also been doing likewise to its news search results,” p2pnet has learned.
Items “unfavourable to Baidu” are either left out of search results or, if they appear at all, “usually show up as an error upon clicking” and, “To completely purge the Internet of negative news of its indiscretions, Baidu has further resorted to calling up reporters and executives of certain news sites to persuade them to take down the unfavourable news,” says our informant, adding:
“It is indeed rich irony that Baidu finds itself the initiator of take-down actions when it finds its own business being affected, whilst its made a business out of other people’s unauthorised and unlicensed content. “News sites that fail to adhere to Baidu’s persuasion would naturally stand to risk lower ranking in future News Search items on Baidu’s news search.”
Stay tuned, and thanks, YKW.
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Also See:
p2pnet – Big Music goes after China’s Baidu, February 29, 2008
china.org.cn – Home Office CD in auction laptop, February 28, 2008
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