China's largest search engine Baidu has shut down thousands of discussion forums about novels on its massive online community Tieba amid concerns over copyright violations.
Baidu said in an online statement that it has launched a comprehensive campaign against Internet piracy and copyright infringement, and it will close all literature discussion forums on user-generated Tieba accordingly. The company is also making it easy for users to report pirated content and vows to scrub illicit content within 12 hours after verification. Baidu said it would announce the restart of such groups in future.
Lin Tingfeng, founder of China's leading online literature site Qidian.com, declared victory on his Twitter-like Weibo. He said "this may be a temporary victory, but we believe justice will be done.
Many Chinese media outlets have exposed a piracy epidemic spreading via Baidu's online communities. An April 5 report by Southern Metropolitan Daily said the latest update of novels that require paid readership on other platforms could be found just a minute later on Tieba for free.
China's online literature industry was estimated to suffer losses totaling 7.77 billion yuan in 2014 due to online piracy. About 64.3 percent of users who read pirated online novels on computers could be traced back to Tieba.
Baidu said in an online statement that it has launched a comprehensive campaign against Internet piracy and copyright infringement, and it will close all literature discussion forums on user-generated Tieba accordingly. The company is also making it easy for users to report pirated content and vows to scrub illicit content within 12 hours after verification. Baidu said it would announce the restart of such groups in future.
Lin Tingfeng, founder of China's leading online literature site Qidian.com, declared victory on his Twitter-like Weibo. He said "this may be a temporary victory, but we believe justice will be done.
Many Chinese media outlets have exposed a piracy epidemic spreading via Baidu's online communities. An April 5 report by Southern Metropolitan Daily said the latest update of novels that require paid readership on other platforms could be found just a minute later on Tieba for free.
China's online literature industry was estimated to suffer losses totaling 7.77 billion yuan in 2014 due to online piracy. About 64.3 percent of users who read pirated online novels on computers could be traced back to Tieba.
