Internet Companies Apologize To China For Being Too Good

Mon, Jan 5th 2009 3:39pm

Filed Under:
china, great firewall, guilt, search engines

Companies:
baidu, google

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China Adds Search Engines To Its Censorship-By-Guilt Plan; How Will Google Respond?

from the fix-it-yourselves dept

It's well known that the Great Firewall censorship brigade in China employs tens of thousands of people monitoring what's said across the internet -- but perhaps far more effective has been the fear factor imposed on various ISPs by the government threatening them with punishment, if they don't ban unacceptable content. Of course, the government doesn't define what exactly is unacceptable, leading the ISPs to over-ban in order to protect themselves. Mostly, this effort has focused on internet access providers, but it looks like the government is now expanding it to search engines as well, after the government publicly named and shamed both Google and Baidu for failing to prevent access to "undesirable" content such as pornography.

This may prove to be an interesting test for Google, which was widely criticized for its original move into China, whereby it agreed to block content as designated by the Chinese government -- while alerting users to the fact that the content is blocked. That was Google's way of striking a compromise, while trying to call attention to the censorship (perhaps in the hope that it would eventually cause the policy to be changed). However, if Google is now getting pressure to be more proactive in determining what's "unacceptable," rather than just blocking specific content designated by the government, things could get a lot trickier for Google. Of course, some might point out that this was the slippery slope that Google put itself on when it first made the deal to get into China.

(Mis)Uses of Technology

Mon, Nov 10th 2008 4:26am

Filed Under:
bittorrent, china, file sharing, great firewall

Companies:
baidu, isohunt, mininova, pirate bay

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China Says: If You Must Infringe On Copyrights, Use Baidu

from the interesting-strategy dept

Many people have noted over the years that with all of the effort that China has put into its Great Firewall, the country hasn't done much of anything to crack down on unauthorized file sharing. In fact, at times, it's almost seemed to encourage it. So some people were a bit surprised to find out that China's censors tried blocking traffic to various well known BitTorrent sites, such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay. However, what may be most interesting is that rather than blocking them outright, it appears that the system just redirects all that traffic to popular Chinese search engine Baidu.

This would be the same Baidu that first became really popular when China shifted all Google traffic to its site, and also the site that stayed popular because it made it easy to download unauthorized music. This would be the same Baidu that was also recently exposed to be fairly complicit in the music downloads it offers, potentially hosting the content itself through a revolving series of ever-changing domains. So, this hardly seems like an attempt by the Chinese government to crack down on unauthorized file sharing -- but an attempt to drive it all to a local company. It looks like the redirects only lasted for a few days, and are no longer in place -- but if the past is any indication, those redirects may come back at any time.

(Mis)Uses of Technology

Mon, Sep 15th 2008 3:48pm

Filed Under:
china, downloads, music

Companies:
baidu

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Baidu Expose Suggests That It's A Lot More Involved In Music Downloads Than It Lets On

from the not-so-much-of-an-innocent-bystander dept

More than three years ago, when Chinese search engine Baidu first filed to go public, we noted that it's huge advantage over Google in China appeared to stem from its very popular music download search engine -- and we wondered if going public would force that to go away, potentially damaging the company's bottom line significantly. In fact, we were surprised that it appeared that the investors in the site hadn't done much due diligence to understand what was going on. The recording industry wasted little time in suing Baidu. While Baidu won the first case on a technicality and quickly sued again.

At first, this did seem like a typical situation seen with other online search engines, such as The Pirate Bay or even Google, where it's not really clear how Baidu could stop the searches for unauthorized music. However, a new investigative report by The Register found evidence that suggests Baidu is actually a lot more involved in the music download business than it lets on. Specifically, the search results mostly link to a mysterious network of sites that are only reachable via Baidu searches. You can't just go to the sites directly. The sites themselves have a long (and potentially growing) list of random domain names such that the songs constantly move around, and any time Baidu receives a "takedown" it can claim it complied, while the music almost immediately shows back up on the next domain in the list. Also, Baidu almost never links to other, legitimate, download sites -- preferring to point people to these sites that are unreachable outside of Baidu instead.

All in all, it certainly sounds like Baidu is a lot more involved in providing the actual downloads than it would as just a search engine.

That said, The Register's report includes a variety of unsupported statements about how this has "destroyed" economic activity in the music business. As we've seen, the music business has actually adapted to the expectation that the music itself is free in China. I recognize that it's popular for the RIAA and IFPI to make claims about how downloading is destroying the music industry, but you would think that the Register would know better.

Culture

Tue, Feb 19th 2008 11:53am

Filed Under:
censorship, china, great firewall, hong kong, sex scandal

Companies:
baidu

10 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Chinese Gov't Scolds Baidu For Not Doing The Impossible

from the you-must-block-all-of-these-pictures dept

Over the last few weeks, there's been a big scandal in Hong Kong concerning photos of certain celebrities caught in various states of undress and various "adult" activities. The police in Hong Kong have had some trouble dealing with this, apparently first claiming that anyone possessing these images was breaking the law and then bungling an investigation into who leaked the images. Now, to top that off, the Chinese government is "censuring" the popular search engine Baidu for allowing people to find these controversial images. It's not entirely clear how the government expects Baidu to simply know that these pictures are illegal and to stop people from finding them, but as we've seen, that's the method by which the Chinese government enforces its censorship -- not by explicitly stating what needs to be banned, but by telling search engines and ISPs that they'll get in trouble if they allow anything "bad" to get through. That leads to aggressively blocking anything that the ISPs or search engines feel might get them in trouble. Of course, to make that work, the government occasionally does need to publicly scold some of the firms for failing, even in doing the impossible, as that gives increased motivation for everyone else to just keep on blocking stuff.

Legal Issues

Tue, Feb 5th 2008 12:27pm

Filed Under:
china, copyright, riaa

Companies:
baidu, ifpi, riaa

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Record Labels Keep On Trying: Sue Baidu For Copyright Infringement Yet Again

from the keep-on-suing dept

Back in December, Alibaba, the Chinese search engine also known as Yahoo China, lost a lawsuit from the recording industry, claiming that the search engine facilitated the downloading of unauthorized content. It's no secret that part of the reason why Alibaba and Baidu have been able to succeed in China is that they're pretty blatant in helping people find content to download. What was strange, though, was at the same time that Yahoo/Alibaba was found guilty, Baidu was found not guilty of copyright infringement, upholding an earlier decision. However, despite having lost the case, it appears that the major record labels have simply turned around and sued Baidu yet again for copyright infringement. Unfortunately, the Reuters writeup doesn't get into the history of the earlier cases (one of which ended just over a month ago) to explain why the labels can simply turn around and sue again, despite having just lost a nearly identical case.

Legal Issues

Thu, Dec 20th 2007 10:41am

Filed Under:
china, deep linking, music search

Companies:
alibaba, baidu, yahoo china