US says China's Baidu search engine is great for pirates

The US Trade Representative (USTR) has accused the Chinese search engine Baidu for steering consumers to third-party websites hosting pirated material. The information comes from USTR's latest report, titled "Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets" (PDF). The search engine was the only website named under a section called Linking:

These are online services engaged in "deep linking" to allegedly infringing materials, often stored on third-party hosting sites. Baidu recently ranked as the number one most visited site in China, and among the top ten in the world.

While Baidu was the biggest entity named, China was still mentioned many times in the report. The country is often criticized for not protecting intellectual property rights. Taobao, for example, is a Chinese website offering a wide range of infringing products to consumers and businesses. Although it has made significant efforts to reduce said problems, it still has a long way to go. Taobao was recently ranked in the 15 most visited sites in the world, and in the five most visited sites in China.

The report also underlined 13 physical markets for piracy (three were in China): Bahia Market (Guayaquil, Ecuador), China Small Commodities Market (Yiwu, China), Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), Harco Glodok (Jakarta, Indonesia), La Salada (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Ladies Market (Mongkok, Hong Kong), Luowu Market (Shenzhen, China), Nehru Place (New Delhi, India, PC Malls (China), Petrivka Market (Kyiv, Ukraine), Quiapo (Manila, Philippines), Red Zones (Thailand), and San Andresitos (Colombia).