Leading Chinese search engine Baidu has signed an digital music distribution agreement with Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music. The deal ends years of rights disputes. Music will be licensed to Baidu and either streamed or downloaded from the company’s servers. Baidu will compensate the rights-holders on what is being described as a “per-play [...]
In 2008, Baidu was sued for around $9 million by Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music for providing so-called “deep-links” to copyright music tracks. A court has now ruled that providing search results does not breach copyright law, clearing China’s biggest search engine of wrong-doing.
China is not new to censoring the Internet, but up until now, BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. Recently however, several reports came in from China, indicating that popular BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay had been hijacked. The sites became inaccessible, instead redirecting to the leading Chinese search engine Baidu.
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