October 27, 2005 at 10:55:00 AM | more stories by this author
Web portal's notice says it "fights piracy" as it faces a bevy of lawsuits over its popular search engine for MP3 music sites.
Facing lawsuits from the four major record labels, Chinese Web portal Baidu.com has posted a new disclaimer to its popular search engine used by many to find free MP3 music on other sites.
The added disclaimer says the company "fights piracy" and will remove links to sites that allow visitors to illegally obtain copyrighted music. The site still lets users search for MP3s available on other Web sites, and it did not indicate if it has already started blocking any illegal sites from appearing in its search results.
Baidu.com is currently appealing a ruling late last month by a Chinese court that ordered it to both pay $8,400 and block links to pirated copies of songs copyrighted by recording company Shanghai Push.
The company is also facing lawsuits from label giants Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony BMG, and their local subsidiaries.
Baidu.com made a splash in August when it debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange and saw its shares quadruple on its first day of trading.
On Wednesday, the company reported its first quarterly earnings with $1.06 million in profits on $11 million in revenue. Those numbers beat Wall Street expectations but still saw the company's shares--traded as BIDU--plummet $10.25 today in midday trading to $70.80, a nearly 13 percent dip.

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