Controversial Chinese search engine Baidu is set to be punished by its government for continuing to carry links to illegal music downloads. The site is one of 14 named yesterday by the Chinese government as continuing to facilitate illegal downloads after repeated warnings to stop doing so, according to Reuters. “We are aware that songs require approval and have sought to comply with previous notifications from the ministry of culture. But search engine indexing is a continuous process and some files may have reappeared in results,” says Baidu spokesperson Kaiser Kuo. The Chinese government has been cracking down on online piracy in the last year in response to pressure from countries like the US, where Baidu has been placed on ‘notorious market’ lists of sites that enable copyright infringement. Details of what its punishment will entail have not been released at this point.
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