In recent years, with the rapid development of the short video industry, the issue of short video copyright has also received widespread attention.
Recently, at the “Short Video Copyright Protection and Innovation” sub-forum of the 8th China International Copyright Forum held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, representatives from copyright management departments, enterprises, industry associations, and copyright owners jointly discussed the short video copyright protection Problems and countermeasures.
Not long ago, the Xi'an Cultural Market Comprehensive Law Enforcement Detachment confiscated more than 14,000 yuan of illegal gains from short video operator Li and fined 16,000 yuan.
The reason is that in order to attract fans and seek illegal benefits, Li simply deleted and cut the audiovisual work "Three Kingdoms" without the permission of the right holder, and produced more than 280 short videos of "Three Kingdoms" and operated them in the short videos. A large number of disseminations in the platform account violated the copyright rights of the right holder, and the problem of short video infringement has once again surfaced.
The copyright staff of short video platforms such as Kuaishou and Bytedance said that the existence of a large number of infringing content affects the continuous development of the platform, but how to solve the problem of short video infringement through more advanced technical means and a more complete supervision system is that they are currently facing Difficult problem.
Infringement and fair use
Short videos have enriched the online life of netizens. According to CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) and other joint statistics, the number of domestic short video users in 2020 will reach 873 million, accounting for 88.3% of the total number of netizens, and the average monthly usage time per capita is 42.6 hours. This has nearly doubled compared to 2018.
Short video user retention continues to increase, and it has increasingly become an important channel for people to share and obtain information.
The huge user group has given birth to the rise of the short video content marketing industry. Many short video accounts copy or simply process other people's works to attract users' attention and achieve the purpose of monetization.
It is understood that the current short video infringement problems are mainly divided into two types: one is simple cutting, handling and collection, and the other is secondary creation.
The former is a tort, and the latter may be classified as fair use depending on the circumstances.
Cong Lixian, a professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Intellectual Property of East China University of Political Science and Law, believes that from the perspective of production methods, short video copyright follows whoever is the original one.
"There are a lot of mixed-cut short videos on the Internet. These short videos are mainly introductions to film and television dramas. They are mostly created with the original content of others. Even if the commentary is very innovative, it is also an infringement."
There are also some short entertainment videos, such as ghosts and animals, which are a fresh form of adaptation, and it is necessary to determine whether they cause infringement according to the specific circumstances.
In some short commentary videos, in order to explain their own problems, they appropriately quote other people's published works in their works, which are fair use and do not constitute infringement.
"For example, "A bloody incident caused by a steamed bun", although a large number of shots and content in the movie "Promise" were used, basically all came from original shots and content, but it illustrates another problem, which can basically constitute fair use." Cong Li said first.
Well defined and difficult to eradicate
Short videos have the characteristics of large user scale, fast dissemination, massive information, fragmentation, etc. Therefore, there are difficulties in copyright protection.
Previously, more than 70 film and television companies and industry associations issued a joint statement calling on public account operators and short video platforms to respect originality and protect copyright.
“The three major video platforms of iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video have also jointly signed a proposal with hundreds of artists, calling for the promotion of copyright content compliance management on short video platforms. However, in reality, short video infringements are still common.
According to the newly revised "Copyright Law", short videos belong to the broad category of audiovisual works.
Ye Xiao, legal director of Beijing ByteDance's rights protection, said that for short video works that have not been registered for copyright, who is the first to publish the content publicly and who is the right holder.
Liu Zhengcao, director of Tencent's rights protection monitoring, believes that it is currently difficult to monitor short video infringement content.
The monitoring objects are massive contents that change in real time. Some videos have been created in various forms and "ghost animals", which are difficult to accurately identify.
In addition, technically, some directional algorithms and geographic shielding issues have not yet been resolved.
When dealing with specific infringement issues, many platforms abuse the "safe harbour" principle, and take notice and delete when they discover problems, which is difficult to deter infringers.
"From the discovery of an infringing video, to a complaint, to its removal, the cycle is very long, and some platforms may not even handle it for one to two weeks. A short video of a few minutes spreads quickly, and it takes one or two days to complete The value of the company has been realized, and the subsequent processing is of little significance, and the protection of right holders is not great." Liu Zhengcao said.
Solve Internet problems with Internet thinking
When will short video infringement chaos cease?
Zhao Xiuling, deputy director of the Copyright Administration of the Central Propaganda Department, believes that in response to infringements in the field of short videos, it is necessary to continue to increase the crackdown on infringements through the administrative department, rectify the harsh infringements of short videos, and at the same time give play to the self-discipline function of the industry. , Implement the main responsibility of the platform, strengthen user management, including real-name management, and establish an active filtering mechanism.
At the same time, since short video copyright involves many rights holders facing many users, it is necessary to explore a collective management mechanism and establish a one-stop efficient authorization solution model.
Ye Shengnan, deputy chief of the Second Trial Chamber of the Hangzhou Internet Court, reminded short video content creators that when faced with a large number of short videos, the cost of traditional evidence collection methods is very high, so creators can try to use blockchain and other technologies to form evidence in the early stage of creation.
After the creator completes a product, he can log on the chain through the blockchain as soon as possible, and register the information, which has preliminary copyright evidence.
Later, creators can also find some industry associations and authoritative institutions to authenticate the deposit certificate and further confirm the rights.
Shi Xiaonan, head of legal affairs at Beijing Kuaishou Music, also said that when reviewing infringements, the short video platform does not only look at whether the right holder has a copyright registration certificate, but also requires relevant evidence that can prove that he has completed the copyright creation process, such as music. Works related engineering documents, authorization documents, etc., can be used as evidence of infringement.
In addition, in the process of using short video works, creators can form an identification code by setting a watermark, and then give it to each platform in the form of a blockchain. The platform does not need to perform complicated machine comparisons, only needs to identify the rights and interests identification code. , Which can quickly identify the infringement.
Reporter Tao Wen