Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Culture (MoC), warned that it would strengthen checks and policing of online music content. The MoC said that search engines, which have been a source of pirated music in China, can only provide search information for tracks from legitimate music companies. This move may pose as a serious problem for China’s most popular search engine Baidu, which has long faced legal issues surrounding its index of pirated music.
According to the report, the MoC is requiring that companies providing online music streams or downloads gain approval as “Internet culture companies,” and only companies that have directly obtained broadcasting or licensing rights can apply for approval. Imported music that is already broadcast online in China but has not been approved must be submitted to the MoC before December 31, 2009.
The impact this will have on Baidu is noted by Pali Research’s analyst Tian Hou, who estimates that as much as 80 percent of Baidu’s traffic is from music search. Hou says that with respect to music search results, most of the links provided are posted by illegitimate music companies. If these links are cut off, says Hou, traffic to Baidu could decrease.
According to comScore, Baidu had 145 million unique visitors in July of 2009 worldwide (with more than 95 percent of those coming from Asia), while its MP3 search engine attracted 47 million uniques, which is only 32 percent but still significant. For July, Baidu was ranking fifth amongst most visited search engines worldwide, behind Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com.
The success of Baidu has been credited to its index of music which is available from its front page, something Google caught onto last year when it entered a joint venture with Top100.cn to offer free and legal music in China. Baidu’s potential troubles could be good news for Google China, which took the beta label off of its music search engine this March and signed major deals to license music from four major music labels (Warner, Universal, EMI and Sony). Google China, however, just lost its top executive, Kaifu Lee.
It seems that this new rule are more likely to be a restriction to Google more than Baidu. Though Google provide free-and-copyrighted music download, but some of these music are not properly published in China (get through the censorship of Ministry of Culture). Baidu always have a way to overcome these issues. But Google certainly has weaker government relationship, especially Kai-fu Lee left his position.
You need to read this first study that alleges that Baidu is behind the hosting of music files, not just Super deep linking. They let users download, play, and add to personal playlists copyrighted tracks. Other links to great stories for COLOR. Bright Color.
‘China’s nonstop music machine’ – Comprehensive 6-Month Forensic Study Slams Baidu, Implicates Management in Assisting in Massive Copyright Infringement
http://www.ther..._investigation/
The Dark Truth About China’s Baidu
http://www.musi...om/archives/145
Being the Change: The Ethics of Baidu
http://siliconh...s-of-baidu.html
Labels seek billions in damages over Baidu MP3 deep-linking
http://arstechn...eep-linking.ars
Baidu faces potential multi-billion dollar liability for breaching music copyrights
http://www.ifpi...s/20080407.html
2005 Chinese Govt Report Attributes Baidu Success to MP3 Downloads. 50% of beijing users search Baidu for MP3
http://libweb.u.../searchmart.pdf
47 Million MP3 Users…Searching for illegal downloads. get it folks! Baidu is done.
More Baidu Issue News.
Recording Industry steps up campaign against internet piracy in China
http://www.ifpi...s/20080204.html
mp3.baidu.com Does More Traffic than TaoBao.com, the #1 ecommerce site in China.
http://www.chin...rip.com&vs=
Quote from the CEO of the IFPI who represent the music industry. IFPI.org
John Kennedy, Chairman and Chief Executive of IFPI, which represents the recording industry worldwide, says: “Baidu is China’s largest violator of music copyrights, generating huge revenue by deliberately providing access to illegal content. The scale of what it is doing can be summed up by the fact that if the courts were to rule that Baidu should pay maximum statutory damages for all the infringing tracks available through its service it would have to pay many billions of dollars in compensation. That would be an enormous but appropriate price to pay for a company that is failing to take what are quite simple steps to respect the rights of artists and record companies and protect the content of IFPI’s members.”
doubt baidu will care. google is about to get owned lmao
The new rule will affect Baidu, in fact a section of it seems to be targeting Baidu. The new rule states search engines can only provide links to legitimate music companies. This is not something Baidu can easily circumvent. Having all the music Google China provides go through Ministry of Culture is not going to be a major problem for Google.
What if baidu partnered with a legal music site that has already licensed all the majors,for a free ad supported service? wouldn’t Baidus problems be solved?
You mean, do what Google has already done?
China still leads the world in counterfeiting of music, movies, software and games. While a crack down on Baidu makes sense, hopefully they don’t forget the offline piracy too …
Baidu will strike a deal directly with all major labels if they decide to even care. Most people in China use top100
Yeah, but the recording industry thinks they are owed billions. Maybe they will make baidu pay a billion dollars and then let them offer their music, which will be hugely expensive for baidu
> something Google caught onto last year when it entered a joint venture with Top100.cn to offer free and legal music in China.
Yeah, right. I’m in Beijing and just downloaded the last album by Black Eyed Peas on Google Music. “Free and Legal”? I doubt it.
It is free and legal. You’ve discovered it’s free. And it’s legal because Google/Top100 have done deals with the major record companies, who decided a few mao per record was better than having Baidu get rich from their IP.
It’s really difficlult to solve this problem in China.
News article that slams baidu. Calls them a Pirate Bay with a search engine on it. Calls out major investors in Baidu as being moronic. points to forensic study that fingers baidu in most likely hosting illegal music, not just Super deep linking.
China ‘orders Baidu clean up’
When the music’s over, turn out the lights
http://www.ther...07/china_baidu/