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Baidu Sued for Piracy on Eve of IPO

Posted by timothy on from the little-backrooms-in-copymart dept.

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."

2 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yah... by BarryNorton · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Google only owns "about 3% of the company" - do you think everything that IBM or Microsoft have a minority investment in (lots!) should be tagged with their logos?

  2. Baidu forgot to send their monthly bribe by jjn1056 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?