US cites Baidu, PirateBay, others in copyright piracy

Baidu is the 6th most trafficked website in the world
© AFP/File Simon Lim

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Monday named leading Chinese search engine Baidu and Swedish torrent download site Pirate Bay in a list of the world’s top online and physical markets for pirated and counterfeit goods.

The US Trade Representative said the two websites, a host of others and more than 20 physical markets, like the widely known Silk Market in Beijing and Panthip Plaza in Bangkok, as “notorious” centers openly selling or enabling the sale of counterfeit or pirated goods, from software to industrial products to live sports television broadcasts.

While no action was threatened in the USTR’s first global “Review of Notorious Markets”, it said the markets were targets for copyright enforcement efforts and could be included in individual country reports on enforcement efforts.

“The United States urges the responsible authorities to intensify efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting in these and similar markets,” it said.

While the markets named spanned from physical sites in South America to Southeast Asia and Internet sites in a number of countries, Chinese offenders were the most numerous on the list.

It said that Baidu, the sixth most trafficked Internet website in the world, and the leader in China, according to web surveyor Alexa Internet, was enabling piracy with “deep linking” searches.

Such searches, for instance, could take a user directly to a page for a pirated download rather than to the website’s home page.

Also named were business-to-business site Taobao, sports telecast rebroadcaster TV Ants, smartphone applications host 91.com; physical markets in Yiwu, Shenzhen and Beijing; and popular computer markets like Hailong PC Mall in Beijing and Shanghai’s Yangpu Yigao Digital Square.

The USTR said that Taobao had moved to curb pirated and copyright-infringing goods on its site, but “it still has a long way to go in order to resolve those problems.”

A slew of BitTorrent sites — which permit speedy downloads of large files like music, videos and books — were named, including The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt of Canada, Russia-based Rutracker, Demenoid of the Ukraine, and Publicbt.

Russia-based social network site Vkontakte was cited for permitting users “to provide access to allegedly infringing materials.”

The list of physical markets included sites in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Kiev, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Manila.

It said the entire economy of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay “is based in part on the trafficking of counterfeit and infringed goods, with a particular emphasis on electronic goods.

“This activity spills over into the entire Tri-Border Region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, creating a hotbed of piracy and counterfeiting.”