Court rules in Baidu's favor in piracy case

A Beijing court has ruled in favor of search engine Baidu in a piracy dispute with Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Hong Kong and Warner Music Hong Kong, Reuters reported. The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court cleared both Baidu and portal Sohu, saying they had done no wrong in linking in search results to music that infringed on copyright. The IFPI, a music industry group, said it was disappointed in the ruling, and said that both sites had "built their music search businesses on the basis of facilitating mass copyright infringement." Last year, Beijing criticized US search engine Google for "disseminating pornographic and vulgar information" through links in search results.