With the development of online literature as an important source of IP for the cultural industry, copyright protection directly affects the sustainability of creation and the high-quality development of culture.
April 26 is the 21st World Intellectual Property Day.
The "White Paper on Copyright Protection of Chinese Online Literature" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by Analysys Think Tank shows that "the death of piracy" is still plaguing the development of online literature.
Source of the picture in this article: "White Paper on Copyright Protection of Chinese Online Literature"
The white paper mentioned that as of December 2020, the number of Chinese online literature users has reached 460 million, accounting for 46.5% of the total netizens.
The overall market size was 28.84 billion yuan, and the scale of piracy losses reached 6.028 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.9%.
Among them, the abuse of new technologies, multiple channels of transmission, and the coverage of the entire industry chain are the three main factors that make the phenomenon of piracy more serious.
More than 90% of full-time creators are infringed
Paid reading is the main income channel for most online literature authors.
White paper data shows that 54.8% of creators earn extra income or pocket money through online literature writing, and 33.1% are full-time authors.
Among them, most creators have encountered various degrees of infringement, and more than 40% of them have suffered frequent infringements. Only 14.6% of creators said they have not experienced infringements. The infringement rate of full-time authors is as high as 94.2%.
53.8% of full-time creators are frequently infringed, which is significantly higher than the overall creators.
"We have a long time to write, and we need to concentrate, especially when writing novels. It is very difficult for me to provide pirated tracing and proof." said the author of "Brilliant Hearts Like Jade".
"Sometimes I feel very confused. The works I wrote didn't bring more readers to myself, but instead became a tool for collecting money from pirated websites."
She mentioned that some piracy platforms pay close attention to the new book developments of well-known online literature writers. Once the writer releases the new book preview, they will preemptively register the book title, fill it with inferior content, induce fans to read it, and obtain huge economic benefits through business models such as traffic monetization. The loss of the writer's income has seriously affected the writer's creative enthusiasm.
One of the famous phenomena is "Biquge".
The first "Biquge" was founded in 2012. It was a website dedicated to serializing pirated web articles, which was later shut down by writers for rights protection.
But not long after, countless pirated web sites with the same name as "Biquge" appeared. Searching for "Biquge" on Baidu still found more than 10 million search results.
Some online writers have searched the Internet for their updated novel fragments, and the updates published in the first second will appear on "Biquge" in the second, and they are not bad and very accurate.
In a special report on CCTV, an online writer uploaded a chapter on the spot during the interview, and it appeared in Biquge two minutes later.
Network literature is "difficult to defend rights"
The white paper mentions that in the face of infringement, only 51.2% of writers firmly choose to defend their rights. Nearly half of the creators are in a hesitation stage, unsure whether they will choose to defend their rights. It depends on the severity of the infringement and the difficulty of defending their rights. Depending on other factors, the percentage of creators who clearly stated that they will not defend their rights is only 2.3%.
In the eyes of the online writer "Your Majesty the King", the main reasons for the inactive rights protection actions are the high costs, complexity of the process and exhaustion of energy.
If the case enters the proceedings, the uncertainty of the time for rights protection is also a major problem.
"The author can actually do more limited, mainly to provide good content for genuine users, such as interactive content. And actively appeal to everyone to raise copyright awareness. Considering that creators usually sign contracts with the platform, the platform needs to continue to improve the efficiency of copyright management , To provide creators with professional legal support and rights protection services to help creators get out of the difficult dilemma of rights protection."
The proliferation of piracy is also related to the reading habits of many readers.
"Textbooks will buy genuine copies, but online literature can be pirated." Many readers treat online literature with a similar mentality, and the characteristics of online consumption of online literature can easily become a "hardest hit area" for piracy problems.
For IP "True Fans", their rejection of piracy is limited to their favorite IP and related products, and they cannot consistently support genuine behavior.
With the continued maturity of IP full copyright operations, the effect of "movie amplifiers" in promoting the rapid "breaking of the circle" of Internet literature IP has become more obvious, and the influence of the original works has been further amplified, which has also driven the phenomenon of piracy to the entire industry chain.
Take this year’s popular TV series "Zuo Son" as an example, searching for "Zuo Son TXT" on the Internet will reveal more than 4 million search links.
Piracy platforms have turned some new readers into pirated readers by quickly launching pirated original works and searching for traffic, which has made the phenomenon of piracy of popular online literary works more serious.
Preliminary results have been achieved in the control of piracy, and copyright protection has a long way to go
As mentioned in the white paper, comparing digital content industries such as video, music, and games horizontally, the copyright protection of online literature is more difficult and the situation is more severe: first, new technologies have made the trend of concealment and maturation of the piracy industry chain more obvious; second, piracy The platform has accumulated a large amount of traffic, and commercial realization relies on stakeholders such as search engines and advertising agencies, and multi-party benefit transmission has increased the difficulty of combating; third, it will take time for the full promotion and cultivation of genuine awareness in the user market.
Cheng Wu, CEO of China Reading Group, believes that for the literary ecology, the creation of writers is the primary productive force.
With the development of online literature as an important source of IP for the cultural industry, copyright protection directly affects the sustainability of creation and the high-quality development of culture.
Protecting copyright means protecting the creative power of writers and the driving force of the source of cultural and creative industries.
Cui Guobin, director of the Intellectual Property Law Research Center of the School of Law of Tsinghua University, suggested that to improve the current situation of the proliferation of online literature piracy, we can start from several aspects: First, strengthen the legal responsibility of users.
The network brings more opportunities for everyone to express, but more freedom also means stricter responsibilities, and at the same time, strengthen the related responsibilities of network service operators.
Third, facing the current situation of online literature extending to the entire industry chain, judicial interpretations need to be further optimized to further concretize the subsequent non-traditional copyright protection content rules.
Zheng Xuanyu, deputy director of the Institute of Intellectual Property Law of China University of Political Science and Law, also mentioned that it is necessary to reduce the cost of rights protection for rights holders.
"Technological progress has escalated infringements, but has not improved the author protection model and means. Therefore, in the governance of online literature piracy and infringement, we should make full use of the development results of Internet technology."
Today, online literature has become a beautiful landscape in the cultural industry.
"The creation of writers is the primary productive force of the literary ecology," said Cheng Wu, CEO of China Reading Group. The protection of copyright is to protect the creativity of writers and the driving force of the cultural and creative industries.
White paper data shows that last year, the scale of China's digital entertainment core industry reached 683.52 billion yuan, of which the online literature market was 28.84 billion yuan. The industry's revenue mainly comes from user payments and copyright operations.
Especially through IP full copyright operations, online literature has indirectly or directly affected the market of about 253.1 billion yuan in games, film and television, animation, music, etc., that is, online literature and its IP operations have an impact on the digital entertainment industry by more than 40%.
The Paper Journalist Fan Jialai