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Baidu Sued for Piracy on Eve of IPO
sentanta writes "With an IPO set for Thursday, Baidu.com 'the Chinese Google' was hit with a lawsuit alleging piracy by the makers of The House Of Flying Daggers. The search engine currently has the largest market share in China (Google also owns about 3% of the company), and it is looking to raise ~$100mm from its IPO. This might become the first high profile test of an anti-piracy law passed by China last December, which punishes offenders with up to 7 years in prison."
It is a bit more severe there if you get caught apparently. Anyway, the 7 years prison do not seem to be really worrying for most chinese since you can still buy ultra cheap copied (or originals printed at "night") on every streetcorner.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
If Google gets sued (by China??) then who gets the 7 years in prison??
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
This case assumes importance since, whatever be the result, a precedent will have been set. Let's hope that anti-piracy (assuming that indeed is the case here) prevails.
tl.
Can anyone here tell me what Baidu.com is actually like as a search engine, in terms of quality and accuracy of results, compared to Google and Yahoo? Why is it popular? I'm really curious.
On first glance, the Baidu site looks like a very spartan search engine, but the links at the top lead to a much more involved "portal" website more akin to Yahoo! than Google. If the site was allowing downloads of the movie and music in question, then this lawsuit will likely go ahead. I'm not too clear on Chinese securities law, but I wasn't aware that a company that was caught in illegal activity could be prevented from selling stock.
From a friend, I have heard that doing business in China is rife with this kind of IP infringement. Set up an office in Shanghai making widgets, and 2 months later you will be in competition with the company upstairs that makes the exact same widgets as you, staffed with the employees you had hired 2 months prior. The culture simply has no qualms with this type of unlimited copying, whether it be copying of CDs and movies or patents and business models.
It's a huge market, so it is very attractive to investors. However, it is also very threatening to companies that rely on information hoarding rather than manufacturing, and thus presents a double-edged sword to foreign companies.
This case, if successfully prosecuted, will send a strong message to the West that foreign investments are safe in China.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem rather exorbitant to value the stock of a web company at 192 million (If my math is correct - based on the 5% that google bought)... especially when they only made 1.5 million profit?
It's possible that other companies have such low profit margins vs. value and I just haven't noticed it - but the company being a website generating ad revenue makes it seem all the more overpriced.
When will technology come back to earth (aka reasonable prices and profit margins)
Interesting how the Google icon gets put away for negative stories....
Since many companies try to lay-low during IPO time this is shore to make for interesting times for them.
__168 more Funny Video Clips
Does anyone "get" the gist of the complaint? I can't see how a search engine gets busted for piracy. It isn't like the search engine company is providing you copies of movies illegally. Please enlighten me.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Seriously. Every news story I've read about Baidu this past month calles them the "Chinese Google" when in fact they're just another search engine, one of a dozen or so in China and one of 5 that have already gone public and seen their stock rise and then collapse.
This one is supposed to be different because Google invested a few million dollars in them?
Give me a break. It's all hype. And now it turns out the company was making at least part of its revenue by distributing warez?
What a clusterfuck.
In other words they are after 4 inches?
Adrian
and this is what you get.
The first search term I used was freedom and lots of hits were found. When searching for "democracy", however, it just outright spit out that dialog box. Interesting.
I'm confused. Search engines allow me (people) to commit crimes? That's like saying gravity allows me (people) to commit a crime. Or better yet, thermodynamics. Have I missed something in the way of logic here?
I guess you will score -1 for offtopic, but thanks for the observation.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
so MP3 is MP3 in Chinese then?
It found Machine Gun Fellatio as a test, with a link to a site in russia even.
Very cosmopolitan.
Not Free SF Reader
baidu = hundred degrees.
;p
bai = hundred / du = degrees
ling = zeroes
bailing = hundred zeroes which is the definition of googal.
anyway, linkified for the lazy:
http://baidu.com/
HD Trailers
I'm sure that Adam is pissed!
Free Firefox news reader.
Try it for yourself.
The great grandparent likes to affirm himself anonymously, methinks. After all, convincing Firefox to raise an error is a suspiciously clunky form of censorship.
http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C3%F1%D6%F7&cl=3
Mmmmm... I wonder if they have a job for my ex-wife?
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Actually i was about to post about the same thing when i noticed your comment.
Something must be broken, i mean, the IE7 article had almost zero moderation and it was an article with 800+ comments!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Remeber when Google was blocked in China a couple years ago? It's widely rumored that Baidu showed to China government censorship how Google was returning some politicially sensitive results. And Google was banned for months, to this day Google access is still not stable at China. As a Chinese I believe this rumor is quite credible.
I haven't looked at it, but how much would it take to trump up a website, submit a story on slashdot over it, then do an IPO on it?
Try using This Page to search for movies on www.baidu.com. Inside the results there is a section for watch / downloads. maybe this is what the problem is. I tried to download but it required a username / password but the ability is there (apparently it's a paid service using baidu (hundred degree) coins).
I noticed it too. What;s going on with the modding lately?
I can't find a "submit your site" entry in the random mishmash that is Baidu via Babelfish. Is there any way to submit a site to them for inclusion/spidering? There a whole lot of chinese eyeballs in the world...
Anyways, FTA:
Beijing New Picture Film Co., copyright owner of ``House of Flying Daggers,'' filed suit last month against Baidu for allowing users to download the movie for a fee...
So what they're saying is, they should've let them download it for free, right?
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
Baidu IPO Fact Sheet: http://china-netinvestor.blogspot.com/2005/08/baid u-ipo-fact-sheet-on-chinese-search.html
I had some a few hours ago, but I spent them all modding up my second account.. gotta get that karma bonus up and running. :p
The early US corporate stock market was a "wild west" with no holds bar. Lots of speculation and manipulation. China is pretty much like that these days. You simple cannot believe the financial reports of such companies. Thats was the people there who are prudent investors avoid Chinese companies completely and buy massive amounts of US bonds.
This story seems to me a bit of an understatement. I have only known Baidu as a source of pirated material, specifically mp3.baidu.com which is a search engine for any kind of music, kind of like a Chinese Napster.
Knowing this I was a bit suprised to hear Google is a shareholder for this company. Actually, most Chinese websites contain pirated material, for example, the university where I work has movies and mp3s right on their website for anyone's enjoyment! Also, almost every city has a local website that is full of every new movie and can be watched as a stream. They are so popular that there are always queues on the weekends.
We're talking death penalty harshly. DON'T get caught by some provincial rube who doesn't know, or want to hear, or know and not care, about the difference between copying bits and putting people into a watery grave, after robbing them of everything else. (Now you know why the penalties for piracy are so harsh.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I seem to recall that getting mod status was based amongst other things on the number of times a user reloaded the front page. Thanks to RSS feeds I haven't looked at the front page in months. Add to that the average /.ers distaste for free reg'ing to anything and we may have a situation where almost noone is qualifying to moderate.
But ignorance is vincible. Its stupidity that 'in-'.
I did a search on 'oligodendrocites and remyelination' (I have MS so I'm interested, okay?) and it found things that were actually relevant.
It was extremely strange reading the page's "summary" in English, presumably that was what was searched through, and facing a page in Chinese (on another tab) when I clicked through the page reference on the search results.
Now I gotta learn Chinese (well enough to read what I want to read.)
Kewl. Ignorance as a motivator.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I ran an identical search through google and got a single ad for 'Myein Repair Research'.
The Bandu one had a few, including an ad for Dell (in RMB, but still Dell.) This had absolutely nothing to do with my search.
Bandu has a while to go to catch up.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
What the hell is $100mm? Is it supposed to be $100M?
Are the stories posted by monkeys trained to look for keywords like "Google," and press the big red "Post" button, bypassing any sort proofreading?
After living in China for 2 years I can assure you that the only reason that is lawsuit is going forward is because 1) Someone at Baidu forgot to pay the monthly bribe to the goverment for protection or 2) someone was able to bribe the goverment with more money to allow the suit to go forward.
Honestly, my DSL service in China links straight to a movie download service. They are hundreds of movies and games that are all pirated versions and this is coming from the gov't run DSL service. Then there are the 4 stores selling pirated DVD's within sight of the local police station. So there is no way anyone in the gov't really cares about this issue right now. They are just posturing for the WTO. Maybe in the future.
Peace, or Not?
Is that one hundred mega-million dollars? or one hundred millimeter dollars?
Man, metrics mess with my head
I was under the impression that Europe uses the Système International d'Unités (AKA "SI" or "The Metric System", the latter being rather generic, considering what Americans use is also a metric system). SI defines 'm' to mean 10^-3, or 0.001 (one one-thousandth). As such, $100mm would be $100-milli-milli dollars, or $0.0001 -- 1/100th of a cent.
It would appear that the use of 'mm' to be a holdover from olden times. In any case, it's unusual to see the notation in any sort of news article, at least in the states.
Anyone else find it annoying that mp3.baidu.com returns mostly WMAs?
Search for "falun gong" and it bans you.
I metamoderate a lot and get points every week. I just had some a couple days ago.
Baidu is awesome especially if you want to find asian content :-) I have been using it for years. It also helps if you can read in another language.......hehehe
This is how it works. If you want to have the mp3 file for any Chinese song, you type in the chinese name for the song and viola you get search results pointing to the song. I belive Baidu is optimized for this kind of piracy and facilitates the piracy. In fact, I think most people who I know use the search engine for this reason only.
Everyone knows that China is a theiving underhanded fuckin country.