Baidu, the largest search engine in China has agreed to pay the music industry millions of dollars in royalties stemming from illegally downloaded MP3s and streaming songs. The search giant announced this week that they have signed a deal with various music industry officials in regards to their music search feature.

Under the new agreement all songs downloaded and streamed will be paid royalties. In order for an artist to collect their fair share of those royalties they must first become a member of the Music Copyright Society of China.

Under the company’s new plans they will offer free downloads of MP3s on a discreet section of their website, while using advertising revenue to pay for those downloads, however at this time the amount being paid to artists per download has not been divulged.

With 75.5 percent of the search market in China and a song search section that is unparalleled in the search industry, the RIAA has called Baidu “undoubtedly one of the largest distributors of infringing music in the world.”

Baidu isn’t the only service in China to offer ad supported digital downloads and streaming services, Google with 19.6 percent of the market already has a deal in place with Orca Digital to offer such services to their Chinese user base.

At this time it sure does seem like Baidu is telling the industry what they will receive, it will be interesting to see if the RIAA and other international players can get the Chinese government to offer them a more robust compensation package for their artist work.

Music Industry Scores a Win Against Chinese Search Engine Baidu is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Chinese Government has warned Google, Baidu and other popular sites in China that they must do more to block porn.

Porn is banned in China but remains widely available.

The Chinese Government said in a statement that the sites had failed to take efficient measures in removing porn from its pages. The censorship of porn is meant to “purify the Internet’s cultural environment and protect the healthy development of minors.”

A Google China spokesperson quoted in an AP article said that Google does not have any pornographic content in Google China and “if we find any violation, we will take action. So far, I haven’t seen any examples of violations.”

Other sites targeted include Sina and Sohu.

China Targets Google, Baidu Over Porn is a post from: The Inquisitr

Sometimes referred to as the “Google of China,” Baidu says it has the nation’s largest legal online movie and TV database. That database, of course, is closely monitored by government authorities.

Baidu — which pulls in about 60 percent of the Chinese search market share — has denied claims that it deleted sites about tainted milk from its search results this month. Online postings suggested the company had accepted money from dairy companies to help hush concern over bad milk (which is blamed for thousands of sicknesses and a handful of deaths). Baidu does allow advertisers to pay for higher result rankings but maintains it has never in any way censored news related to the infected milk investigation.

Embattled Search Engine Strikes New Video Deal is a post from: The Inquisitr