Ethical Dilemmas of Baidu Company

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Ethical Dilemmas of Baidu Company
Introduction
Baidu is the biggest search engine in China and it has a reputation of censoring from other search engines. The company is based in Beijing and it has been named as one of the notorious markets in terms of privacy and infringement of copyrights. The company has a huge number of internet users and the efforts of Google to redirect their web to Hong Kong only resulted in the doubling of the share price in the company. However, the services are said to be illegitimate and the company had to sigh new copyrights with songwriters and book authors after the departure of Google. The company was sued for having unauthorized songs on their servers. The company is engaged in technological chicanery to make the users access illegal reservoirs. As a result, the company is involved in ethical dilemmas. The paper is going to discuss four ethical dilemmas in Baidu Company.
Ethical Dilemmas in Baidu Company
The company is faced with a dilemma of bias since it needs to please the users and at the same time follow the legal requirements. The company has a legal responsibility to please the users by providing the services that are needed by the site users. The MP3 search users depend on the company to search for information about songs. The features of the site favor some of the users hence some people are termed as more valuable than others. For instance, the people whose stories are featured in the engine are put at a disadvantage making the company act in an unethical manner. Some sites are more favored than others like the MP3 search sites. This makes the company to be faced by ethical dilemmas since it is supposed to treat all people and all sites equally in regards to ethics (Dan, p. 1).
The company is faced with the dilemma of personal privacy. The privacy of people is supposed to be observed at all times but the users also need to access information about the trending news. The search engine contains information about individuals and ordinary people and it is easily available on the site. Most of the people do not consent to have their information on the database and when such information is available online it violates the rights of the individual. For instance, the x-rated photos of a government official were available in Baidu, even though the specific individual did not consent to the issue (Dan, p. 1). The company is faced with the dilemma if it should respect the rights of the individual people whose information is availed on the internet or the internet users who pay for the services and sustain the company.
The dilemma of democracy, censorship and liberty threats faces Baidu Company. Search engines are supposed to be democratic giving a voice to a diverse group economically and socially. At the same time, the site should not exclude some sites systematically. The company has a moral and a social responsibility to respect the people who use the site as well as the people whose stories are contained in the sites. The company is accountable for the practices of the sites and the policies put in there. The company has a social responsibility to provide information and knowledge to the society. At the same time, the company is morally responsible for the issues that may arise in the case of provision of morally controversial information. This puts the company in a dilemma since it has to make sure that it fulfills both the responsibilities of providing information and knowledge and ensure that the information does not create any moral controversies (Dan, p. 2).
The company is faced with cybersecurity dilemma. Cyber security involves the interconnection of things on the internet including webs, printers, web cams and other software devices. Hackers use intelligence to acquire information from these devices and it leads to the information being available online. Since Baidu is famous for censorship the company is most probably involved in censoring information that has been hacked. As a result, the company is faced with a dilemma of obtaining their information and news from all sites. Cybersecurity poses a threat to the privacy of people and as a result may face a legal threat. Baidu offers many services like movies, TV programs, MP3s and MP4s which makes it aces the information from a variety of sites (Dan, p. 2). The company is faced with the dilemma of obtaining information from many sites hence continue to please the users or just obtain the information from one site and only avail some of the services.
Conclusion
Baidu search engine censors its information from other sites and it provides all kinds of information. Through these services, it encounters several ethical dilemmas like privacy issues, cyber security, the issue of bias and democracy and censorship issues. The company was faced with moral and legal ethical issues since it had a moral and social obligation and needed to provide information to the society and at the same needed to respect the security of other people and ensure that the individuals consented with the provision of their information online.

Work cited
Dan Levin ” Chinese Web Search Giant Serves Two Masters”. (2011).