Baidu CEO seeks win-win business model in copyright dispute
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In his first response to a recent copyright dispute, Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu, Monday said the company is stepping up anti-piracy efforts and hopes to work out a mutually beneficial business model to settle the dispute.
China's most popular search engine was accused of copyright violations by a group of writers earlier this month after Baidu Wenku offered their works for free online without the their authorization.
Negotiations between Baidu and the writers broke down on Thursday with some writers accusing Baidu of being arrogant and insincere during negotiations.
At a summit of IT leaders in Shenzhen, a Chinese city bordering Hong Kong, Li said the company was taking the copyright dispute very seriously and stepping up anti-piracy efforts.
Baidu hopes to work with copyright holders and authors to achieve a win-win business model, Li said.
"I'm also looking forward to a satisfactory answer," he said.
In a statement Saturday, Baidu apologized to the writers and promised to delete all rights-infringing materials over the following three days.
The company denied that its file-sharing platform had made any profit and said it would "actively promote the cooperation with writers and publishing houses to make money via charging for reading or advertising and give most of the profits to the copyrights holders."
Baidu Wenku allows users to read, share or download most books for free. Some books, however, come with a fee which is still a large discount from the cover price.
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