Baidu plans legal music downloads

The search engine has been at the center of copyright abuse claims

BEIJING - China's biggest search engine, Baidu Inc, plans to provide free downloads of copyrighted music from next week. The move comes as a response to increasing criticism of its involvement in copyright infringement.

The new service, Baidu Ting, will see the search giant in head-to-head competition with its rival Google Inc, which has invested in Top100.cn, a website offering legal music downloads.