Copyright protection in the cultural market is facing difficulties, and Internet infringements are frequent
"Ip Man 2" encountered 200,000 pirated seed downloads from the e-donkey overnight. The entire film of "Tangshan Earthquake" appeared online two days before it was released. In the face of a new round of crazy online infringement, copyright owners have launched a counterattack to protect their legal rights. However, there are still many problems that need to be solved in the future counterattack. Which method is the most effective way to protect rights? How much compensation can copyright owners receive? Where exactly does piracy come from?
Crazy 200,000 torrent downloads overnight
Among the dozens of domestic films screened in the first half of the year,"Ip Man 2" is undoubtedly the most beautiful one. It won the runner-up in the box office rankings in the first half of this year with a box office score of 230 million yuan. Before it was "Avatar", which created the global box office myth. Since "Ip Man 2" was released on April 27, it has maintained a daily box office level of more than 20 million yuan for several consecutive days. However, while the producer was still immersed in box office joy, he was suddenly hit by online piracy.
An Xiaofen, producer of "Ip Man 2" and president of Dasheng International Media (Beijing) Co., Ltd., recalled the scene at that time and was still excited. In the early morning of May 4, a friend told me that a pirated link to "Ip Man 2" appeared on the Internet. I thought it was impossible, so I ignored it. Within a day, several people told me the same. After she returned home that night, she searched the Internet with suspicion and found that a pirated link really appeared. She described herself as being silly at the time. Looking at the changing number of download users on the computer screen, she hardly slept all night.
The first to appear pirated was the electronic donkey operated by Shanghai Yinzhi Network Company, which recommended a clear and infringing version of "Ip Man 2" for the first time on its website. On May 4 alone, there were 200,000 seed downloads nationwide. Later, pirated seeds spread widely, resulting in a situation of crazy piracy on the Internet. In just a few days, the number of pirated websites quickly reached more than 800. The day after discovering the piracy, An Xiaofen quickly found the company's legal consultant to discuss countermeasures and reported the case to the Public Security Bureau, but the number of online piracy was still growing rapidly. ldquo; At that time, our anti-piracy awareness was not strong enough, and we didn't know what to do when we saw so many piracy situations. rdquo; At the suggestion of a friend, An Xiaofen found two anti-piracy Internet companies, commonly known as the Internet Police, to help them clean up pirated websites large and small. Within three days, websites that spread piracy basically closed piracy links.
Afterwards, according to statistics from the movie network, more than 10 million people ordered and downloaded pirated "Ip Man 2" online within three days. Among them, at least one-third of the centrists may go to the cinema to buy tickets to watch a movie. Based on the average box office, online piracy has caused box office losses to "Ip Man 2" reaching hundreds of millions of yuan. The download volume of eDonkey on the night of May 4 alone caused at least more than 10 million yuan in box office losses.
The hit movie "Tangshan Earthquake", which grossed 500 million yuan in box office, was also subject to malicious piracy on an unprecedented scale. Sun Jianhong, legal counsel of Huayi Brothers Media Co., Ltd., said that the film premiered nationally on July 22, but as early as July 20, a video website released a clearer gun version of the entire film. Three days after the film was released, a clear DVD version of "Tangshan Earthquake" appeared on several video websites. This is exactly the same as the recent piracy situation of "The Sea of Spy" produced by Huayi Brothers. "Sea of Spy" will be released on June 17, and a clear version will appear online on June 20.# p# Subtitle # e#
Jiang Zhaijin, deputy general manager in charge of copyright affairs of Poly Bona Film Distribution Company, said that once she went to Xi'an on a business trip, she found that the local local TV station was broadcasting the movie "The Warlords" produced by Poly Bona. At that time, only three months had passed before the film was released. Generally speaking, films will not be sold to TV stations until eight months after they are released. ldquo; We have lost control over piracy. rdquo; She said.
Legal rights protection once again sounded the rallying call”
Of course, Huayi Brothers, Poly Bona, and Dasheng International are far more than just those affected by piracy. Some industry insiders bluntly said that no website is clean from the beginning.
Zhu Yongde, chairman of the China Film Copyright Association (hereinafter referred to as the Film and Television Association), said that online piracy has become a major area where film and television works are infringed today. A survey by the Film and Writing Association shows that among the main audience groups of movies aged 18 to 35, the proportion of movies watching via the Internet accounts for 50.5% of the total number of movies viewed, with an average of 31.1 per person per year, with the highest reaching 500 per person per year. Take "The Founding of a People's Republic of China" as an example. The number of cinema viewers for the film is 13.05 million. However, as of January this year, the cumulative number of Internet movie-watching on seven websites including Sohu has reached 19.6 million; the proportion of "If You Are the One" is even worse. The number of cinema viewers is 9.55 million, but as of January this year, the cumulative number of Internet movie-watching on four websites including Sohu is 44.17 million. Having a large audience also means that the possibility of being pirated is greater. According to statistics, the piracy rate of movie works in Internet cafes is as high as 89.4%.
In the face of online piracy, more and more copyright parties are adopting legal means of litigation to protect their rights. An Xiaofen said that Dasheng International has joined forces with the Film and Television Association to file a lawsuit with the First Intermediate People's Court of Shanghai City in the name of the two companies regarding the infringement of "Ip Man 2." Based on data such as the click-through rate of e-donkey, the box office loss displayed by the digital platform of the cinema electronic ticketing system, and the average box office of theaters issued by China Distribution and Screening Association, the film loss was relatively accurately calculated as 11.8508 million yuan. Sun Jianhong also said that the day after the online piracy of "Tangshan Earthquake" appeared, that is, July 21, they carried out notarization and preservation, and Huayi Brothers will file a lawsuit against the infringing party.
After the Film and Photography Association is transformed into a collective copyright management organization, it will also file the first civil lawsuit in its own name. Zhu Yongde said that the first shot of the Film and Television Association's legal rights protection was directed at several Internet cafes in Beijing City and Shanghai Hero Broadband and Hangzhou Century Link, which provided infringing films to Internet cafes. The copyrights of many films such as "The King of the Gun" and "The Second in the World" provided by Shanghai Hero Broadband and Hangzhou Century Link to Internet cafes belong to member units of the Film and Television Association and have been authorized to implement collective management by the Film and Television Association. After obtaining a large amount of conclusive evidence, the association decided to file a civil lawsuit with the competent court in batches, demanding that the infringement be immediately stopped, an apology, and compensation for economic losses. ldquo; In the future, the focus of the Photography Association's crackdown will also shift from Internet cafes to so-called online theaters that provide pirated Internet cafes. rdquo;# p# Subtitle # e#
Combination tactics for rights protection
Internet infringement has many characteristics and continues to be upgraded with the development of technology. Sun Jianhong said that it first developed into P2P communication similar to electric donkeys through database storage and dissemination. From the second half of 2005 to 2006, podcast communication on video sharing websites appeared, and search links appeared shortly afterwards.
In order to fight online infringement, each production company has also come up with its own tricks. Since the movie "Dream as a Dream", Poly Bona has changed the way he cooperates with video websites.# p# Subtitle # e#
In the past, we all adopted exclusive licensing methods for online film copyrights, but now we have changed to a distribution model. The main reason for this is to facilitate rights protection. rdquo; Jiang Zhaijin said that in the past, after exclusive authorization, even if Poly Bona discovered online piracy, it could not defend its rights on its own. It had to use the exclusive licensee as the main body to defend its rights, which would be much later in terms of timeliness. The biggest loss was still the movie box office. After cooperating with the website separately for distribution, the online copyright of the film is still in my hands, and once piracy is discovered, timely rights protection actions can be taken. In China, copyright protection is divided into two ways, judicial protection and administrative law enforcement. For copyright owners, which method is most effective is a matter of opinion. Zhu Yongde analyzed that judicial protection is divided into civil litigation and criminal litigation. Among them, civil litigation can obtain financial compensation for the copyright party, but it requires the claimant to provide evidence, and the amount of compensation is generally not high; criminal litigation has a large penalty, but the time is long., the copyright party does not receive financial compensation. Administrative law enforcement is fast and there are certain penalties, but copyright owners also do not receive financial compensation.
Therefore, the Film and Photography Association will not only file a civil lawsuit in its rights protection, but will also apply to the General Administration of Press and Publication and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to impose administrative penalties on infringing Internet cafes, online theaters and video websites. rdquo; Zhu Yongde said.
Film and television companies have also launched a combination of anti-piracy efforts. Sun Jianhong said that Huayi Brothers 'anti-piracy plan has two aspects. One is to have anti-piracy teams all over the country. There are experienced lawyers in all places to promptly carry out notarization and preservation of website infringement, and then send a letter to infringing websites requesting them to immediately stop infringement. Legal proceedings will be filed against websites that are in bad conditions and repeatedly infringe. At the same time, Huayi Brothers will also actively seek help from relevant government departments.
Is piracy compensation limited high or low”
However, there are currently some difficulties in the fight against online piracy, and low compensation amounts are an important issue. ldquo; It can be said that the film online infringement compensation records were all set by Huayi Brothers. rdquo; He gave an example that in 2004,"Big Shot" was infringed and spread by a Beijing video website, and Huayi Brothers sued the infringing website to court. In 2005, the Haidian Court ruled that the infringing website compensated Huayi Brothers for economic losses of 340,000 yuan. This set a record for the amount of compensation at that time, and this record was not exceeded in subsequent years. Until the end of 2009, Huayi Brothers received 350,000 yuan in infringement compensation in the online infringement case of Jiedao, setting a new record again. ldquo; From 340,000 to 350,000, the increase of 10,000 yuan between actually took a lot of effort. In most online piracy and infringement cases during this period, the amount of compensation did not exceed 100,000 yuan, and generally only one to 20,000 to 20,000 yuan or 20,000 yuan, which is less than a fraction of the loss caused by piracy to a film. rdquo;
When "Assembly" suffered online infringement, Huayi Brothers asked a third-party Tianya. com to conduct a questionnaire survey. One of the questions was whether you would go to the theater to buy tickets and watch movies if there were no online piracy. Survey results show that less than 43% of people choose to go to the theater to buy tickets to watch movies, about 41% choose not to go to the theater, and the remaining more than 10% say it doesn't matter, and may or may not go. ldquo; The website we sued at that time had more than 10 million pirated clicks in just a few days. If we calculated based on the 43% ratio of the survey questionnaire, we lost at least 4.3 million viewers who went to the theater to buy tickets and watch the movie, but the final compensation was only 350,000 yuan." rdquo; Sun Jianhong said.
An Xiaofen also said that although they filed a financial compensation of 11.8508 million yuan against the electric donkey, they were not sure how much compensation the court would ultimately award. ldquo; Many people have told me not to ask for so much compensation, and the court will not award it this way, but I can't voluntarily give up my rights." rdquo;
According to my country's Copyright Law, if copyright is infringed, the infringer shall compensate the right holder based on the actual losses; if the actual losses are difficult to calculate, compensation may be paid based on the infringement holder's illegal income. If neither of them can be determined, the people's court shall award compensation of less than 500,000 yuan based on the circumstances of the infringement. In this regard, many people in the legal profession have proposed that in terms of statutory compensation for infringement, foreign countries generally stipulate that the minimum amount of compensation payable by the infringer shall not be less than what is, and the highest amount is unlimited. On the contrary, we set the highest threshold and the lowest amount is unlimited. ldquo; Such regulations are not conducive to curbing and combating infringement. rdquo; Sun Jianhong also said.
Puzzles about the origin of piracy
How did the pirated videos that are popular on the Internet come about? Regarding the source of piracy, the industry said that this is still a mystery, and it also causes difficulties in law enforcement and tracking to some extent. ldquo; The source of the gun version usually comes from the movie theater, but the source of the clear version is unclear." rdquo; Zhu Yongde said.
An Xiaofen still hasn't figured out how the piracy of "Ip Man 2" disappeared. She thought about it and could only confirm that the material was lost, but the material has been locked in my own home and has never stayed outside for the night. An Xiaofen said that they have always been very cautious. The process of transferring the material she described to reporters was like making a movie. Our material came directly from Thailand. On the day we got on the plane, the director and producer directly sent the person carrying the material onto the plane. We picked it up as soon as he got off the plane and sent the material directly to my home without any intermediate process. Piracy occurred after we handed over the material.& rdquo;
Although it is difficult to determine the source of piracy of the movie, it is not completely uncontrollable. In this regard, foreign technology is relatively mature. Zhu Yongde said that Hollywood now uses a watermark technology to identify the source of piracy. Every copy has a watermark and each theater is issued with a different password. Once verified afterwards, you can know which copy was leaked, and you can even accurately determine the time and point of the day. ldquo; Currently, similar technologies are also being developed in my country, but they have not yet been applied to the field of anti-piracy in movies. We will also actively promote this technology." rdquo;