US Points Finger at Baidu and TaoBao for Facilitating Piracy

A report from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has placed China's biggest search engine Baidu, and eBay alternative Taobao, among the most notorious piracy markets.

"The Notorious Markets List identifies selected markets, including those on the Internet, which exemplify the problem of marketplaces dealing in infringing goods and helping to sustain global piracy and counterfeiting," the report [pdf] explains.

USTR puts Baidu and Taobao alongside MP3 download sites, torrent indexes like ThePirateBay, IsoHunt and Btjunkie, Russia's vKontakte, or smartphone app market 91.com.

Baidu, which is among the top ten websites in the world by traffic and offers a plethora of services in addition to web search, has been included because of deep linking directly to pirated content.

However, Taobao, which is an online auction and shopping site similar to eBay was named a "notorious market" for allowing sellers to deal in counterfeit goods that abuse the trademarks and intellectual property of others.

USTR recognized the company's efforts to address these problems, but noted that it still has a long way to go until they are resolved.

A spokesman for Alibaba Group, the parent company of Taobao, told Bloomberg that "We appreciate the USTR’s acknowledgment of our ongoing efforts to work with brand owners in protecting their intellectual property rights.

"We will continue to work closely with brand owners and others to further enhance the level of trust and integrity in our online marketplaces," he added.

Alibaba Group also runs alibaba.com and aliexpress.com, two wholesale business-to-business (B2B) websites.

Alibaba.com's chief executive officer David Wei recently resigned following the results of an internal investigation, according to which he failed to take timely action to stop an increase in fraud incidents on the site.