The New Sin! Why Are People Angry at Baidu?

[This post is written by our guest editor: Michelle Chen, from School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University]

A few weeks ago, Chinese race car driver, novelist, blogger, and future New York Times columnist Han Han wrote a letter to Baidu founder Robin Li – and caused quite the commotion. The letter essentially lashed out at Baidu’s business model – the locating and sharing of free digital information at the expense of creative artists.

“Baidu is eviler than Google”, a netizen commented on FTChinese.com. Why do they think that?

The New Sin: Baidu Wenku

Baidu has been suffering the complaint and anger for a long while because of its paid ranking system, filtered content and pirate downloads etc. The new sin got Baidu on fire is Baidu Wenku. Baidu Wenku is a free literary sharing platform, which is a student’s heaven but a writer’s worst nightmare. Users upload files and give ratings to earn stars, which are then used to download desired files. However, many of these files are uploaded without consent, and include copyrighted materials from all over the world, including the US and Europe.

Mid-March, 50 authors were summoned on Sina Microblog, including Shen Haobo, Zhang Hongbo, and Han Han. The authors, teaming up with Chinese Written Works Copyright Society and Mo Tie Book Company, sued Baidu on grounds of violation of copyrights. Since, a number of other companies including Qidian Online, Shengda Online, and even Japanese publishers, have begun to sue Baidu.

Even Guoqing Li, CEO of Dangdang.com, China’s largest online book retailer, posted on his microblog that he would “financially support Baidu suers”, “save tens of millions RMB by terminating its Baidu advertising to improve Dangdang.com services”, and welcomed everyone to “log onto Dangdang.com directly to search for any products you want to buy.”

“For a 25.0 yuan book, the average author makes about 2 yuan. Deduct 30 cents taxes, and you’re left with 1.70 yuan for each book sold,” says Han. At this rate, even a bestselling author will have to work for 100 years to afford a decent 2-room apartment in the suburbs of a large Chinese city.

Baidu admitted this time. After the copyright protection issue was brought to light:

	March 19	Post-uproar	% Change
Literary works	2.8 million	170	99.99%
Short novels	132	3	97.73%
Total works	200+ million	170+ million	15.0%

*source: http://tech.qq.com/a/20110331/000113.htm

However, so far Baidu has won most of both its anti-trust and copyright violation cases, that Han Han sarcastically mused “Perhaps Robin Li’s father is Li Gang?” This refers to the words used by the son of a high-ranking police chief who tried to evade responsibility for hitting and killing a student in a car accident by using his father’s name. Ever since, “My father is Li Gang” gained notoriety for those who thought they would always be protected by impunity.

Legally Acceptable?

“Mimicking and replicating – in China, they are all the utmost forms of flattery. When an artist puts Li Bai [famous poet] in their artwork even without consent, or copies your essay word for word, it’s considered a compliment, not an offense,” a renowned Political Economics professor at Peking University once said.

However, the fight against piracy must come at a time that is right for China. As one netizen commented on FTChinese.com, “to be honest, I am ashamed to be a user of pirated material. However, when I found that I couldn’t find jailbroken software, free texts, or China-adapted games, I thought, those people who are fighting against piracy don’t really know what they are doing. So I spoke out less. I am for piracy…perhaps when the Chinese become wealthier and are able to purchase certified products, then we can fight against piracy.”

Rumors are this week that there will be a huge government crackdown on unregistered DVD shops and street-side vendors in Beijing. This could be partly in response to Han’s widely talked about blog post, or fulfillment of a promise 10 years after accession to the WTO.

[image courtesy of Tencent Tech]

Related posts:

1. Chinese government investigating Baidu for copyright infringement of books
2. Rumour: No more pirate MP3 – Baidu going to resolve dispute with music companies
3. Playing With Baidu Ting, It Offers You Everything But Pirate Music

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Deal Aggregator, dealmandi Hits Your Mobile With An Android App

In India, we have more deal sites than unique deals happening any given day (okay! I am exaggerating a bit here, but hope you get the pun). And lately we have seen a sudden peak in deal aggregators, i.e. sites that attempt to play the meta role in deal space [see this Aggregated List of Local Deal Aggregators In India] and aggregate deals from these sites.

One of the aggregators, Dealmandi has launched an Android app which brings deals from sites like myDala, koovs, taggle, cityoffers and even the newly launched timesdeal to your Android device. Dealmandi essentially surfaces deals from these sites and importantly, is available for 43 cities.

App Review: Dealmandi

Review: By khanapurechait [via : Appnomy]

Almost everyday we hear of a new deals site being launched that offers great discount. Deals are the hottest things out there today, sadly due to so many different players offering different deals at different discount rates does not really help end users, we need deal aggregators that help us choose the right deal easily by bringing together the all available deals in one page view.
Pros:
Dealmandi does an amazing job at deal aggregation, and shows a comprehensive list of deals to choose from. It aggregates deals from Timesdeals, dealsandyou, rediff deals, koovs,dealivore and more! The app supports a whopping 43 cities! This is what makes the app so good. What the app scores highly in is the simple interface. It is really very easy to use and you can’t go wrong with that. There are only 3 buttons that will filter all deals and one that let’s you choose your city.
Cons:
The app shows you a list of deals, but any further info about the deal is not shown, hence to see all the details of the deals you have to visit the website through the app, time consuming to do this again and again. A nice addition would be to add the phone numbers of the deals provider in the app to purchase over the phone.
All in all the (almost) perfect deals aggregator for your android phone.

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Do give this app a download and share your feedback.

App download link: market.android.com/details?id=com.dealmandi.org

Note to App Developers: Do submit your apps on Appnomy for community feedback/review.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X1 spy shots

Lenovo’s new hight-end notebook ThinkPad X1 specs were unveiled on web about two weeks ago. we were impressed by its hight specs and thinness. Today several pictures were published by Chinese website Mydrivers.com, and they were claimed to be spy shots of ThinkPad X1. As expected, the machine looks very nice. It even gets keyboard light design. Sadly these pictures just show a portion of the notebook, and none could provide a full view. Once there is more information, we’ll definitely have you updated.

[Source:mydrivers.com]

• ThinkPad X1 full specs leaked?
• ThinkPad X200 got cloned in Shenzhen
• Lenovo ThinkPad X220 revealed in China
• Lenovo Ideapad Slite unveiled, runs Windows 7
• Lenovo LePad running Windows 7,revealed on its official microblog
• Lenovo S800 gets a transparent color display
• Lenovo Lephone clone surfaces in Shenzhen
• Lenovo LePhone hands-on Video
• Lenovo ideapad Z460 notebook unveiled
• Lenovo ideapad Y460 shipped in China

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Startups Capitalize On Singapore General Elections 2011

We’ve previously covered how AllDealsAsia launched an “unbiased, randomized casual voting platform” for the elections. Another Singapore upstart, Storepair has done a hot-or-not for election candidates. Here’s a roundup of companies that did some stuff for the elections.

(1) Storepair.com with iLIKEU

Storepair’s iLIKEu system, pitting two random candidates against each other.

Away from elections, Storepair calls themselves a “locational social E-commerce directory that connects businesses and customers”.

(2) Jamiq and Swarm with Singapore General Elections Tracker 2011

Click for enlarged version.

Data visualisation company, Swarm, teamed up with social media monitoring company, Jamiq to launch the Singapore General Elections 2011 Tracker:

This “is a visualisation project that reflects the true national agenda set by the social nature of online discussions and trends around Singapore’s 2011 General Elections. The goal of the project is to help the public follow the elections by separating the signals from the noise by trending the top topics being discussed and showcasing the top articles being shared. The project looks at news articles, blog posts, and Twitter data to identify the top mentioned keywords and the most shared content.”

(3) Brandtology and Tribal DDB with SGPartyTi.me

Advertising agency Tribal DDB teamed up with Brandtology to launch SGPartyTi.me:

SGPartyTi.me “brings together, on a single page, a snapshot of the news, blogs and conversations on the 2011 Singapore General Elections”.

Click for enlarged version.

Click for enlarged version.

Click for enlarged version.

The dashboard presents emotional sentiments for each party and pulls out trending discussions from social media. It is also able to show positive and negative online buzz generated on individual GRCs and SMCs.

(Brandtology sold a majority stake to Media Monitors in February.)

(4) ThoughtBuzz with onefiveseven

Social media monitoring company ThoughtBuzz launched onefiveseven:

“onefiveseven looks at the use of social media in elections and politics. Through the use of several quantitative mechanisms, we intend to look at things in an objective manner. We’re not interested in the politics, but are interested in the social media political behaviour.”

(5) AllDealsAsia with their Elections Special

Daily deal aggregator AllDealsAsia launched their voting for elections a few days ago:

Let us know what others we may have missed and we’ll add it to this list.

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Nokia Will Soon Sell Its 500 Millionth Phone in India, up for bidding [Current Price More Than Rs. 2L]

Nokia will soon sell its 500 millionth phone in India and the C3-00 phone will be signed by Shahrukh Khan. The phone is up for bidding and the latest price is Rs. 232,000!

The phone will be presented to the highest bidder by the star himself. What’s more, this highest bidder also gets to watch the match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians in Kolkata on May 22, 2011. The highest bidder will be contacted by Nokia to pay the winning bid, and Nokia will match this amount and donate to charity.

Last year (2010), Nokia completed its 15 years in India and even India’s first cellular call was made on a Nokia phone.

The Nokia India Story

• 1995 – First mobile phone call made in India on a Nokia phone on a Nokia network
• 1998 – Saare Jahaan Se Acchha, first Indian ringtone in a Nokia 5110
• 2000 – First phone with Hindi menu (Nokia 3210)
• 2002 – First Camera phone (Nokia 7650)
• 2003 – First Made for India phone, Nokia 1100
• 2004 – Saral Mobile Sandesh, Hindi SMS on a wide range of Nokia phones
• 2004 – First Wi-fi Phone- Nokia Communicator (N9500)
• 2005 – Local UI in additional local language
• 2006 – Nokia manufacturing plant in Chennai
• 2007 – First vernacular news portal

Here is a quick snapshot of Nokia’s India story.

As far as bidding process is concerned, it’s quite a simple process. All you need to do is register on the site and submit your bids (there is hardly any verification regarding the authenticity of the bidder).

Nevertheless, its important to note that Nokia has sold ~500 million phones in India (and at the same time, we have 500 million authentic telecom subscribers in India, as per latest TRAI report). Having said that, Nokia is steadily losing market share in India and we hope that the company realizes that it needs to go nimble and creative in India (plus product team needs to move out of their A/C offices and face the dust).

What’s your take on Nokia’s India story? Is this sustainable? What about the next 500 million? Can Nokia do it before Micromax(s) of the Indian mobile world?

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What Pasta can teach Entrepreneurs [Be your own Chef]

[Editorial Notes: Guest article contributed by Alok Kejriwal, Founder of Games2Win.]

I am obsessed with Pasta. Ever since I traveled to Italy to get trained in the factories there (I used to work in my father’s socks factory), I cannot get Pasta, its permutations, shapes and sizes and of course how it is cooked – out of my mind.

In the context of Pasta, Al Dente in Italian literally means ‘To the tooth’. This refers to that ‘perfect’ moment when the Pasta is firm, strong, crisp and cooked – but not soft and supple. It’s just the way it should be. The best way to get your Pasta to be Al Dente is to keep nibbling on a piece of Penne or the Fettuccini while it is boiling. The very moment you can bite into the pasta and yet feel its firmness, it’s ‘Al Dente’. Immediately drain, add whatever you have to into your Pasta and enjoy (I like it with very little garlic and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil with mixed Italian herbs and top it with grated parmesan cheese). Buona Appetito!

Now, observing the ‘Al Dente’ method has inspired me to think of ‘perfect moments’ as they appear in an Entrepreneur’s life. As they say, you can never time anything to perfection, but just like Pasta, if you know when your best time is near, you can leverage it well.

Some of the instances when an Entrepreneur can enjoy her ‘Al Dente’ or perfect moment:

I can barely cook, but my cooking is better than yours.

Sometimes, knowing little of something absolutely new is better than knowing everything of something very old. To explain – in 2003, when we began working with Sony television in India on Mobile VAS, we were the only Company in India to understand ringtones, sms gateways etc. Just the fact that we could manage ‘mobile stuff’ won us the Indian Idol business in India and 50% revenue sharing across the board. Circa 2009, everybody knew how to do everything and the party was over. But in those 6 years, we managed to fund and exit the business!

Grow the Walnut – Don’t try to eat it if you can’t open it.

In 2006, Mobile2win China was in business since the last 5 years and the operational difficulties in China were increasingly hammering us. We had a great platform, operator connectivity across the length and breath of the PRC and very scalable technology. With all this, we were still struggling to make money. We had grown and ripened a beautiful walnut but couldn’t understand how to open it and enjoy it. If we waited too long, the fruit inside would rot. As we were wondering, the Walt Disney Company came along. They were keen to have a ready-made mobile platform with operator connectivity in China! They weren’t looking for revenues in a Company but an operation with employees and licenses and the knowhow. They bought out mobile2win from us in an all cash transaction that made us 6x on our original investment. Disney was the squirrel who was destined to eat the nut. We were fortunate to find them at just the perfect time!

Being the first item on the buffet table.

By 2007, lots of VCs who had made money in the MMOG (massive multiplayer online games) business in China and Korea were punting that India would be the next geographical bet for massive valuation businesses using these games. Their thinking was that China and India were similar in many ways, and if Shanda and The9 could become billion dollar plays in China, the same story could repeat itself in India. As part of this punt, VCs began looking at entrepreneurs in India who had gaming experience, and my name along with that of my co-founder – Mahesh Khambadkone popped up. A few meetings later, we had co-founded Games2win and were given a cheque of 5 million dollars by Clearstone Venture Partners to start up that business. It’s full credit to Clearstone that they quickly accepted our point that MMOG was not working and allowed us to change our business model to casual snacky browser games. But Games2win was started up because we were the first set of entrepreneurs that the VCs met when they came to the buffet table. I guess we were the right people, in the right place and at the right time.

‘When’ is a matter of personal taste..

If you look at the cases of Yahoo passing Microsoft, Groupon saying no to Google, it’s the chef saying, ‘I don’t want perfect Al Dente. I’m happy to serve the pasta maybe soft, maybe supple but at the time I want to serve it’. Nothing wrong with that! Yahoo and Groupon continue to march on.  On the other hand, Sabeer Bhatia sold Hotmail much earlier than the Al Dente moment. Given the way valuations have soared, Hotmail could have fetched 4 Billion, not 400 million? Who knows?

If there was ever a perfect ‘Al Dente’ moment, it was when Steve Case sold AOL to Time Warner.  A small fledgling company positioned itself so cleverly to an old media behemoth and the values that it extracted are now historical and soul shattering. Unfortunately, in the case of Time Warner, what they thought was ‘Al Dente’ Internet Pasta turned out to be Al Dente Rotting Garbage. Billions of dollars of value were destroyed cleaning up that horrible stinking kitchen (AOL+Time Warner).

Chef’s tip: Be your own Chef. Taste your Pasta at all times. When you think the time is right, just serve it – ‘Al Dente’ or not.

[Reproduced from Alok’s blog]

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Mobile Banking: Transaction Limit For Mobile Wallet Card Increased to INR 50K

RBI has upped the transaction limit for mobile wallet card to Rs. 50,000, bringing semi closed m-wallets on par with the other semi-closed prepaid instruments.

Semi-closed wallet are prepaid payment instruments that are redeemable at a group of clearly-identified merchant locations/ establishments which contract specifically with the issuer to accept the payment instrument. These instruments do not permit cash withdrawal or redemption by the holder. Essentially, what this implies is that operator subscribers cannot use the ‘currency’ to buy talk time (RBI has mandated that the prepaid currency needs to be kept separate from talk time currency).

Very recently, Airtel received RBI’s nod to launch mobile payment service in India and so far, RBI has given license to 12 companies to launch their semi-closed prepaid wallet (Mobile Banking: Nokia Partners with Union Bank of India | Mobile Money Services Launched by Nokia [Complete Details]).

Also, RBI has increased the transaction limit that are permitted without end-to-end encryption.

“The users of mobile banking services and also the volume of such transactions have been steadily increasing since the introduction of this facility. As per the current instructions mobile banking transactions up to  ` 1000/- are permitted without insisting on end-to-end encryption. Banks have been representing to the Reserve Bank to enhance the cap fixed for such transactions given the extensive use of this facility.

It has, therefore, been decided to increase the limit of such transactions without end-to-end encryption to 5000/- with effect from the date of this circular. Banks may ensure to put in place adequate security measures and velocity limits based on their own risk perception.”

Recommended Read:

- The Status Quo of Payments in India

- How Reserve Bank of India (RBI) can facilitate eCommerce and Online Transactions in India

» Complete coverage of mobile banking in India

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