Netease, one of China's leading internet companies, announced surprisingly that it has stopped providing an on-line MP3 search service as of August 15 to prevent possible copyright infringements, the Beijing Daily reported Wednesday.

In a short statement, Netease said that with the implementation of the regulation on internet copyright protection, the general public has begun to pay more attention to the on-line copyright problem, the newspaper quoted.

Netease does not wish to encourage customers, especially young customers, to download music free of charge through MP3 searching, it said in the statement.

This kind of searching service fosters copyright infringement to some extent, although the MP3 searching itself does not directly relate to the copyright of songs, Netease said.

Netease will suspend this service until the rights and interests of songwriters are guaranteed, according to the newspaper.

Heavily dependent on its MP3 search service, China's most popular search engine Baidu.com, had a first stock offering in the United States this month that set off a buying frenzy. Its share price soared more than 350 percent in its first day of trading.

(Xinhua News Agency August 18, 2005)