Highlighting the vagaries of doing business in online search and the internet in China, search engine Baidu.com has been ordered to stop providing referrals to music download sites that offer copyright-protected songs, reports E-Commerce Times. The order from a Chinese court came in conjunction with a case in which Baidu was found responsible for consumer infringements of music copyrights.

Baidu emphasized that it does not offer download services but that sites that do appear in its search results, and said it would appeal to a higher court.

"We believe that the district court order was based on a misunderstanding of the search engine technology and therefore is without merit," Baidu lawyer Decheng Li said in a statement.

But the actual issue may be that China has decided to take a hard-line stance on copyright.