Produced | Sohu Technology
Author | Song Wanxin
Edit｜Yang Jin
“Watching a movie in three minutes” may become a thing of the past.
On April 9, more than 50 film and television companies, five long-term video platforms, and film and television industry associations issued a joint statement, calling on all short video platforms and public account producers and operators to respect originality, protect copyright, and not to implement related film and television works without authorization Editing, cutting, handling, dissemination and other infringements.
The above-mentioned right holders stated that they will take practical and effective measures to pursue the legal liability of the infringer, and jointly curb the industry chaos of unauthorized use of film and television works by public account producers and operators.
Sohu Technology noted that the parties to the joint statement include associations such as China Television Art Exchange Association, video platforms such as iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku, and Mango TV, and film and television companies such as Noon Sunshine, Huace Film, Ciwen Media, and Xinli Media. The co-branded party almost encompasses the core strengths of the film and television industry, and the short video platforms and public accounts mentioned in the statement are clearly aimed at Douyin, Kuaishou and Station B.
As the market for short videos continues to rise, short video platforms have also become the latest high incidence of Internet intellectual property infringement. Popular TV shows, variety shows, and cinema movies are the “hardest hit areas” for infringements. The “2020 China Online Short Video Copyright Monitoring Report” shows that from 2019 to October 2020 alone, a total of 16,026,900 suspected infringement links have been monitored, and the infringement rate of exclusive original authors is as high as 92.9%.
Attorney Song Congcong from Shanghai Hushi (Jinan) Law Firm summed up to Sohu Technology that the current infringements on the short video platform are mainly divided into:
The first is to reprint short videos of others without their permission, which is commonly referred to as “transportation”.
The second type is to perform secondary processing of film and television works, etc., to form short videos without the permission of others. This is the “editing, cutting” and other acts referred to in the statement, also known as “second creation” videos.
The third is to adapt other types of works into short videos without the permission of others, such as adapting other people’s novels into short plays.
The fourth is to use other people’s music, songs, etc. in short videos without the permission of others.
“This joint statement is mainly aimed at the first and second behaviors. Many units jointly issued this joint statement. It can be seen that such behaviors have become widespread and have to be rectified.” Song Congcong said.
“Teach people to explain the movie”: 12,800 yuan
Taking the Douyin platform as an example, a simple search for “movies” will reveal that there are tens of thousands of blogger accounts of similar movie commentary such as “XXX Said Movies” and “XX Movies”, and their fans are more than one million.
Through the content design of each account, it can also be found that short film commentary videos have become a very mature marketing account model. Most accounts condense a two-hour movie into three short video clips by editing clips of film and television dramas, summarizing the plot, and supporting them with commentary.
On the home page of the account, the blogger will collage three short video covers into the same movie cover, which not only enhances the overall “professionalism” of the account, but also binds the views of three short videos. Many bloggers also produce collections for drama series. For example, the collection of “Black Mirror” on the homepage of “Nanzhe Movie” uses 12 episodes to explain the British drama.
Mature industrial operations have brought huge income to such accounts.
Under the question of “What are the profiteering industries that ordinary people don’t know?”, the netizen “Lin Kaikai” replied, “Being a Douyin movie editing account, it can easily relax tens of thousands of dollars a month.” Many people may not know that the various wonderful movie clips that we usually use on Douyin are actually a huge profit industry that has existed for a long time.”
In his answer, Lin Kaikai taught in detail the method of making a movie editing account. After completing the preliminary accumulation of account maintenance and content, the realization of a movie commentary account is very flexible. Lin Kaikai summed up nine kinds of products, including goods in the window, In addition to basic methods such as WeChat monetization, live broadcast, and star map advertising, Lin Kaikai said that teaching drainage is the fastest monetization method. Generally, if there are more than 100,000 fans, someone will come to bloggers to learn editing.
The blogger “Small Films and Big Films” is a typical case of monetizing through teaching and paying for content. He has millions of fans on several major video platforms, which is a rare account that can adapt to various platforms. In terms of monetization methods, “Small Movies and Big Movies” have been channeled to the official account to establish a paid column for film and television drama commentary. For example, six seasons of TV drama commentary, the first season is free to watch, and the next five seasons are paid to watch.
The film narration teaching class is also one of the main ways to realize “small films and big films”. The all-around class for film and television short video creators with a fee of up to 12,800 yuan. The training content includes introduction, film and television, copywriting, dubbing, editing, operation, and realization. When film commentary videos are becoming more and more the “code of wealth”, “teaching people to explain films” has also become a business with considerable income.
It is worth noting that the movie propaganda party will also take the initiative to cooperate with the film commentary, the propaganda party will take the initiative to give the film that needs to be edited, and then calculate the money based on the number of views. A netizen disclosed a bonus setting for submissions, showing that there is a bonus of 6,000 for broadcasts of more than 8 million, and a bonus of 1,500 for broadcasts of more than 1 million, and a bonus of three. A film commentary is solicited, and there are 39 accounts that can receive bonuses in total. In this case, Song Congcong said that he would not be found to constitute an infringement.
However, Lin Kaikai mentioned that Douyin is now suppressing clip numbers. “Because too many clip numbers have flooded in, a lot of millions of large numbers have been recruited some time ago and have been restricted.”
The marketing industry chain continues to expand, and many film commentary accounts are also focusing on film practitioners. Some insiders broke the news that a movie commentary account with 500,000 fans on the B station, Douyin, and Kuaishou platforms contacted him and was paid to write a film review copy about “Travel in Busan 2: Peninsula”. The copywriting requirements are: 1. Write the story of the movie in detail and clarify the main line of the story; 2. Let the audience know what kind of story it is; 3. Finally, make a simple summary of the movie, such as expressing the cruelty of human nature and the remaining beauty.
When the person expressed the need to analyze dry goods such as audiovisual language, light and shadow, and composition, the other party bluntly said “no need”. The person was quite indignant about this, “To a certain extent, the low level of our domestic movie audiences is inseparable from these marketing accounts from the media.”
“Second Creation” Boundary Struggle
As the largest “second creation” video website in China, the film and television area of Station B also faces copyright issues. Judging from the ranking of popular videos in this area at station B, the types of decreasing popularity are film and television talks, film and television clips, short films, and trailer information. In other words, at station B, commentary videos are also the most popular.
Take the UP master “Muyu Shuixin”, whose total number of fans is second only to Bilibili’s official movie account, as an example. UP master planned the “Muyu Micro Theater” column to interpret “Please Answer 1988”, “Game of Thrones”, and “Rang Bullets”. “Fly”, “The Great Gatsby” and other film and television dramas, are broadcast in the order of 1 to 2 million. However, different from the marketing account on Douyin, the quality of the content of the B station film and television UP host is generally excellent. In addition to the explanation, they will add their own understanding and thinking of the film and output their own ideas.
But the boundary issue is still blurred. IQiyi has sued several times over the works of the second creation film and television drama of the B station UP. In 2016, the B station was not authorized to broadcast the “Happy Camp” which was bought out by iQiyi’s network information dissemination rights. At that time, the court decided to compensate for the economy. The loss was 57,000 yuan. In May 2018, iQiyi sued Station B again because the latter provided online broadcast services of “China Rip Hop” program clips on the platform without authorization.
Earlier in 2015, nine websites, including iQiyi and Douyu, sued Station B in the name of “violating the right to disseminate information on the work network.”
According to the information from Tianyan, there are 759 court announcements about station B. In addition to Beijing iQiyi, there are also multiple court announcements such as Beijing ByteDance Network Technology Co., Ltd. and Yongdi (Beijing) Information Consulting Co., Ltd. It is a “dispute over the infringement of the right to disseminate the information on the work network”. In addition, there are 793 related legal proceedings.
“Film commentary” is a form of creation that has existed since the beginning of the media era, and disputes about whether this form infringes copyright have never ceased.
The first-generation film commentary blogger “Gu Amo” who became popular because of “Watching Movie XXX in X Minutes” has also been involved in copyright disputes. In 2017, Gu Amo was sued by KKTV, Youshui Integration, Disney and other companies for infringement. Among them, Shui Chenggong said that more than 4 movies could not be shown in cinemas because of Gu Amo.
And Gu Amo argued that his video complies with the principle of fair use of online copyrights, is a secondary creation without infringement, and that the production of the video is to educate people who cannot understand the movie, rather than to gain profit.
After that, Gu Amo and the five companies entered the mediation stage. On July 31, 2019, Gu Amo went to the court again to attend the mediation meeting. Later, he revealed on Weibo that it would take two or three years for the whole thing to come to fruition. During this period, the case did not affect Gu Amo’s video update.
Regarding whether the “second creation” video constitutes infringement, the key lies in the boundary of the definition of “fair use”. Song Congcong believes that if it is only the simple removal of the original work, meaningless processing, it will definitely constitute infringement. However, if the secondary creator has made an original expression, he needs to consider whether it is fair use. If it is fair use, it does not constitute infringement.
According to my country’s “Copyright Law”, the fair use rules need to meet three requirements: (1) Specify the author’s name or title and the title of the work; (2) Must not affect the normal use of the work; (3) Have to reasonably damage the copyright The legitimate rights and interests of people. If the above conditions are met, it does not constitute infringement. The platform should allow it to publish, and the platform rules can be used to make traffic recommendations.
Earlier, an app called “Illustrated Movies” was sued by Youku. The software featured high-definition online graphic movie commentary, and it only takes 10 minutes to understand the content of a movie. Last year, the App was found to use screenshots of film and television dramas and simply introduce the plot, infringing the plaintiff’s right to disseminate information on the work network, and the court did not recognize the defendant’s defense of “fair use”.
In this case, the Graphic Movie APP uploaded a total of 382 screenshots of the first episode of the film and television series “Three Lives III: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms” on Youku in 2017, which were played approximately 70,000 times.
The biggest highlight of the judgment in this case is that the court has clearly defined the “fair use” situation in the copyright law. The court held that the act of “providing works to the public by wired or wireless methods” stipulated in Article 10 (12) of the Copyright Law should not be narrowly interpreted as providing complete works to the public, because the copyright law protects It is an expression of originality. As long as the original expression of the work is used, it is under the control of the right of communication of the work’s information network.
Lawyer: The platform’s “safe harbor principle” cannot be abused
Attorney Zhu Jieping, founding partner of Taikunlu, told Sohu Technology that with regard to whether the secondary creation videos posted by users of the short video platform are deemed to be infringing, first of all, regardless of the degree of processing and production, as long as the copyright owner of the original film and television works has not been obtained Licensing, its reproduction and distribution constitute infringement. If the second creation video released by the user does not substantially alter the content of the original work, it is generally an infringement of the reproduction right, the right of distribution, and the right of information network dissemination. If the original work is altered to a large extent, in addition to infringement of reproduction rights, distribution rights, and information network dissemination rights, it may also infringe the original film and television work author’s right to modify, protect the integrity of the work, and the right to adapt.
“The law does not completely prohibit the second creation, but the second creation requires the permission of the copyright owner of the original film and television work, and the rights of the original copyright owner must not be infringed. If the second creation is permitted, the created video has a certain The originality of the novel may also constitute an adaptation of the work, and the secondary creator also has the copyright to the second created work.” Zhu Jieping said.
Lawyer Xia Hailong of Shanghai Shenlun Law Firm told Sohu Technology that according to the judging standards of Youku v. “Illustrated Movies” App, the above-mentioned so-called movie review accounts are essentially video versions of “Illustrated Movies.” It does not belong to the reasonable use of related film and television works, but a real violation of the right to disseminate the information on the work network, fearing compensation.
“Although these short videos that have been edited and spliced are only a few minutes long, their materials are all from other film and television works, and the purpose of these short videos is to convey the main content of the original film and television works to users. This is bound to be As a result, some users who have watched short videos no longer watch the original film and television works.”
In Xia Hailong’s view, the fundamental reason why such cases are difficult to manage is that the short video platform itself applies the “safe haven” principle (the platform does not bear the liability for infringement until the right holder’s infringement notice is received). In the past, these short videos have often been disseminated on a large scale-in the face of interests, the platform may also turn one eye and close one eye. Traditional rights protection methods appear to be relatively lagging and cannot effectively prevent infringement.”
Song Congcong also believes that the “safe haven” principle cannot be used and is the key to solving the problem of infringement. He said that in addition to the “safe haven”, there is the “red flag” principle. If the fact of infringement is obvious, the short video platform still ignores it, and it will also be recognized as an infringement.
“It should be noted that the’safe harbor principle’ is only an expedient measure to balance the interests of rights holders, users, online platform parties, audiences and other parties. As a service provider, it provides information storage space in name, but it is actually The work implements information network dissemination behavior. As the biggest beneficiary of industry development, short video platforms should strengthen supervision and content review, and perform a high degree of care and responsibility for the regulation of short video dissemination behavior and the sound development of the industry.”
Song Congcong suggested that it is possible to cooperate with intellectual property departments and institutions to strengthen the copyright registration of short videos, strengthen infringement evidence collection and storage through blockchain and other technologies, and assist right holders in rights protection.
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