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DEBATE 2011 - Intellectual Property - Agreement between Baidu and Majors

Ending a long legal conflict, Baidu, the Chinese search engine which controls 76% of the domestic market, has signed an agreement on July the 19th with three majors of the music industry: Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music, represented by the joint venture One-Stop China. The partnership aims at fighting against piracy by allowing Baidu to make available a legal offer on its website. Baidu could allow access to about 500 000 pieces in the catalog of the three majors in MP3 and streaming, and in return Baidu guarantees remuneration to rights holders based on the number of downloads and listening. 

For the protection of copyright, Universal, Warner and Sony had sued Baidu for violation of intellectual property rights and in 2010 a Chinese court ruled in favor of Baidu, considering that the websites on which points out the search engine were “legal download sites”. However in a report in February 2011, U.S. authorities had designated  Baidu as "one of the hubs of global piracy and counterfeit" with Pirate Bay. Following these agreement, the majors have also pledged to end legal proceedings against Baidu. 

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