After Years, Baidu Does the Right Thing 百度多年来的一个正确之举

By newsdoug on July 20, 2011

I have to congratulate Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) for finally doing the right thing, or at least taking a step in the right direction, by signing a deal with 3 major record labels, Universal, Warner (NYSE: WMG) and Sony Music (Tokyo: 6758) that will see it do the once unthinkable and actually pay for copyright protected music. (company announcement) Of course there’s a bit of irony here, as Baidu previously said it will continue to offer pirated copies of music from those three labels and others via its highly popular free music swapping service, which has been criticized for years for allowing the illegal sharing of copyrighted music. Baidu’s move comes just weeks after leading video sharing site Youku (NYSE: YOKU) announced a similar tie-up to offer legal films and TV shows from Warner’s library to its premium customers. (previous post) I’ll be a bit cynical here and note that Baidu went for years Baidu goes legal with new music tie-up without seeming to care about copyright protection before finally becoming “enlightened”, and have no doubt that its change of heart is coming at least in part due to heavy pressure from regulators who are trying to stamp out China’s rampant piracy. While it’s one thing for a little old lady from the countryside to sell pirated DVDs from a cart on the side of the street, it’s quite an embarrassment for Beijing when many of its top Internet companies like Baidu also engage in such practices, and clearly we’re going to see a move by major Net firms to slowly phase out their sites that encourage copyright infringement over the next few years. As that happens, look for more deals like the one just announced by Baidu, and also look for the company and its peers to suffer a bit when they finally close down their popular but illegal song- and video-swapping services.

Bottom line: Baidu’s slow embrace of copyright protection marks the beginning of a cleanup of pirated material on China’s Internet, which will benefit content providers but hurt Web firms.

百度与环球唱片、华纳唱片<WMG.N>、索尼音乐<6758.T>三大音乐唱片公司签署正版音乐使用协议。我必须要为百度<BIDU.O>这一正确之举或至少向正确方向迈进了一步的行动而表示祝贺。该协议将使百度要为使用受版权保护的音乐付费。当然，有点儿讽刺的是，百度之前曾表示，会通过其非常受欢迎的免费音乐交换服务继续提供盗版音乐。免费音乐交换服务多年来因允许非法分享正版音乐而备受抨击。几个星期前，优酷<YOKU.N>宣布要向其优质客户提供来自华纳的电影和电视节目。我要在这稍微尖刻一点：百度多年来都好像不在乎版权保护问题，直到最近才突然“恍然大悟”，而毫无疑问的是，这部分是因为百度受到了来自监管者的强大压力。中国监管机构正努力打击盗版。农村老妇在街边卖盗版碟也就罢了，很多像百度这样的顶级互联网公司居然也这麽做，对於中国政府来说确实不怎麽好看。未来几年，我们肯定会看到，大型网络公司会逐渐关闭其涉嫌侵犯版权的网站。若果真如此，预计还会有很多像百度刚刚宣布的那种协议的出现，而当这些非法的音乐和视频服务被关闭後，相关公司应该会感受到一些痛楚。

一句话：百度最终签署正版音乐使用协议，说明清除中国互联网上的侵权内容正逐渐开始，这将使内容提供商受益，而使网络公司受伤。