China shuts search engine blacklisted by US
03 Jan 2013
A local internet search engine notorious for carrying pirated content has been shut down by Chinese authorities. The search engine had earlier been blacklisted by the US.
According to the BBC, Gougou.com, run by Chinese web firm Xunlei, which earlier had plans to float on one of the US stock exchanges, has been forced to shut down.
According to analysts say the closure could be an attempt to make a fresh bid to float again. The closure came weeks following the search engine adding to the US Trade Representative's report on major copyright offenders.
"Gougou.com has been closed down. Thank you all for your support, and we are sorry for any inconvenience," an announcement on the web site read.
Last month China said he law against malicious registration of trademarks China had been beefed up and crack down launched against intellectual property rights (IPR) violations that resulted in 30,000 convictions in cases since 2008 to address the concern of top foreign brands.
The search engine had been added to the US Trade Representative's report on major copyright offenders a few weeks back.
The USTR commented in its report, "This Chinese-based site facilitates the downloading and distribution of pirated music and movies, not only through deep-linking services, but also by offering cyberlocker facilities and through its own innovative high-speed P2P [peer-to-peer] file-sharing system".
