After a year that saw Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) make a huge agreement with American music companies to pay copyright owners for music that had been posted to a Baidu service, the United States has removed Baidu from its official piracy list. Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo expressed satisfaction with the decision, telling Penn-Olson:
“We’re naturally very pleased that the significance of this deal has been recognized.”
The piracy list, a strange mix of online and offline markets worldwide that reportedly deal in pirated and counterfeit goods, still includes Alibaba’s online market Taobao, as well as Beijing’s Silk Market, a brick-and-mortar tourist trap that sells cheap knockoffs to tourists for outrageously inflated prices.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s report yesterday noted that Alibaba’s Taobao had made efforts to curb piracy, but that it would remain on the list, as “much remains to be done.”
[Via Bloomberg, Image Source]
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