China's Baidu Warned Over Porn Content on Cloud Storage Service

Chinese internet search provider Baidu has been warned over porn content on its online storage service and asked to clean up improper content.

The official Xinhua news service, citing a statement released by Beijing's anti-pornography and anti-illegal publications office, reported that investigations by Beijing's cultural administrative authorities found some accounts on Baidu Cloud contained obscene and pornographic content.

Accordingly, the company has been warned against slack supervision of its storage service and urged to "promptly delete all files in question, shut down accounts uploading such content and present a report on its clean-up effort", the office said.

Meanwhile, Baidu has posted a red-letter anti-pornography slogan on its online storage service website. The link leads to a forum post which says the company has started monitoring its servers for objectionable content.

"In order to cleanse cyber environment, Baidu Cloud thoroughly bans the sharing of pornographic content... Users are welcome to report improper resources," the post, dated April, reads.

In April, China began a massive online campaign named "Cleaning the Web 2014" to crack down on online pornography. The campaign targets websites, online advertisements, forum posts and smartphone applications with pornographic content.

The programme has so far resulted in the closure of 1,222 websites and deletion of about 2,200 pieces of text containing pornographic information, according to official figures.

Earlier, China's leading portal website Sina.com and online video service provider Qvod were warned by authorities over obscene content. They were threatened with harsh punishments including licence revoking.

Search engine giant Baidu is facing lawsuits and has been criticised over its alleged dominant market position.

The company has recently been sued over its search results, after a clinic that allegedly had a phoney psychiatry license appeared atop its search result. The clinic was claiming to make gay men become heterosexual.

The company was earlier accused by state broadcaster of massive interference in its search results. It allegedly gave priority to paying brands, but refrained from marking them as advertising as Google does.

In addition, the company allegedly skipped companies that refuse to pay from regular search results.