Securities Times reporter Zhilan
The protection of intellectual property rights has been continuously strengthened, and the public's awareness of copyright has gradually increased. Today, many users have developed the habit of paying for content products such as videos, music, and pictures.
This part of the income has become an important source of income for the content operation platform.
However, a Securities Times reporter recently discovered that on Pinduoduo and other e-commerce platforms, a large number of merchants sell video and music works resources at low prices through online disks and other methods, and some merchants sell "cracked version" software for less than 10 yuan. , you can freely watch paid content on more than ten platforms such as Tencent Video, iQiyi, and Mango TV.
There are also many shops selling Jay Chou songs. 300 songs are sold in packages as low as 0.48 yuan, and the sales volume is tens of thousands. On the copyrighted music platform, users need to be a member to listen.
Audio and video resources are sold at low prices
In recent years, top music platforms have invested heavily in competing for the copyright of popular singers' works, especially the copyrights of singers such as Jay Chou are expensive.
However, on e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo and Taobao, users can freely listen to and download all songs of Jay Chou and other well-known singers for as little as 0.5 yuan.
Taking Pinduoduo as an example, when the user places an order to buy the works of the corresponding singer, the store owner will provide a link, open the link and use the NetEase Cloud Music APP to scan the code to log in, and the store owner will package the purchased songs and upload them to the buyer's website. In the music APP, after 5 minutes, users can freely play and download all songs in their own APP.
In Pinduoduo, the package price of all Jay Chou songs is as low as 0.48 yuan, and many stores have sold more than 50,000 pieces.
On copyrighted platforms such as QQ Music, members need to be opened to listen to and download Jay Chou's songs; NetEase Cloud Music currently does not have the copyright of Jay Chou's works, and even if a member is opened, it cannot be listened to.
In addition to music works, on Pinduoduo, there are many merchants selling various film and television resources at extremely low prices, including some movies that are being shown in theaters.
"105 Marvel movies, 1600G, super clear and not deleted", "The movie "Hello, Li Huanying", online disk files, automatic delivery, super clear genuine without watermark", you can find a lot of them by searching Pinduoduo casually Stores that sell resources such as movies, TV dramas, and variety shows are mostly priced at 1-3 yuan.
In addition to the works of a single movie and a single singer, members of major content platforms are the more popular "commodities" on the Pinduoduo platform.
The reporter found that there are a large number of products on the Pinduoduo platform under the names of "artifacts for listening to books" and "artifacts for chasing dramas".
For example, a merchant sells membership accounts of various platforms at a price of 9.6 yuan. After purchasing, users can download the dedicated APP through the link sent by the merchant, and then they can watch and listen to the paid content of more than ten platforms such as Tencent, Youku, Mango TV, and Himalaya for free.
As of press time, the product has sold more than 100,000 units.
"This situation is very likely to constitute infringement." Qi Tian, a lawyer from Guangdong Huashang (Nanjing) Law Firm, told reporters that merchants on e-commerce platforms often do not have the authorization of the copyright owner. For the purpose of profit, merchants send online disks through private messages. Links and other means to sell video and music works resources to the outside world, so that users can play video and music works at the time and place selected by themselves, have violated the copyright owner's right to information network dissemination of works.
According to the "Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China", without the permission of the copyright owner, copy, distribute, perform, and disseminate their works to the public through the information network; Technical measures are all infringements.
Is the review mechanism sound?
In fact, most merchants have long been prepared for the legal risks that may exist in the sale of these products.
On Pinduoduo, almost all businesses selling the above-mentioned resources have attached relevant copyright notices.
If there is a store that says: its resources are obtained through public and legal channels such as the Internet, it is only used for reading and communication, and has no commercial purpose.
The copyright belongs to the author or publisher, and the store is not legally responsible for the copyright issues involved.
But judging from the sales situation, the argument of "no commercial purpose" is obviously untenable.
Although most resources do not sell for high prices, merchants will still get a decent amount of money from them due to the huge sales volume.
For example, Jay Chou's works sold by some merchants, although the price of a single copy is less than 5 yuan, but the sales volume is usually as high as tens of thousands of copies, and the store income is as high as hundreds of thousands of yuan.
Qi Tian told reporters that even if the merchant wrote a disclaimer, the above behavior of the merchant obviously does not comply with the provisions of the Copyright Law on "fair use", so the merchant still needs to bear the legal responsibility to stop infringement and compensate for losses.
The phenomenon of peddling pirated resources through online platforms has always existed.
In recent years, with the tightening of copyright protection, this phenomenon has improved on platforms such as JD.com and Taobao, but on Pinduoduo, such links still exist in large numbers.
The reporter recently tested and found that when searching for "artifacts for chasing dramas" on Taobao and JD.com, the products returned were mobile phone brackets and various electronic equipment, and when searching Pinduoduo with the same keywords, "permanent VIPs on video platforms" appeared. "Permanently free cracked version" and other products.
The reporter asked Pinduoduo's official customer service about the above phenomenon. The customer service said that Pinduoduo attaches great importance to intellectual property rights and respects every original content creator. In early 2019, the intellectual property protection platform was launched.
The platform has a complete review and supervision mechanism for the entry of merchants, related qualifications, sales of goods and after-sales service.
Pinduoduo also clearly stipulates that when merchants enter the platform, they shall not sell goods that infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others or provide services that infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others, and are prohibited from publishing information on goods and services that infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others.
However, from the actual situation, Pinduoduo's review mechanism has not effectively prevented these infringing products from being put on the shelves.
Relieve the Difficulty of Protecting the Rights of Enterprises
For the above-mentioned commodity links that widely exist on platforms such as Pinduoduo, each platform does not turn a blind eye.
In February this year, Jinjiang Literature City issued several announcements pointing out that Pinduoduo’s established stores sold their contracted works and pirated paper publications without permission. file a lawsuit.
Not long ago, the Shanghai Pudong New Area Procuratorate publicly tried a case of copyright infringement of audio works.
In this case, the person involved purchased and downloaded the audio content of the Himalaya platform, uploaded it to the cloud disk, and through e-commerce and social applications, at a price of 5~10 yuan per unit or 198 yuan, 380 yuan, 698 yuan, pirated audio. spread to others.
The case involved more than 40,000 pirated audio works and nearly 120,000 audiobooks.
In the end, the defendant was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison for copyright infringement and a fine of 100,000 yuan.
However, without the cooperation of e-commerce platforms, it is difficult to effectively control the infringements of most individual merchants on e-commerce platforms.
A relevant person from a domestic audio platform told reporters that infringement on the e-commerce platform will bring huge losses to the company. When the company finds such a phenomenon, it will be handled by the legal department.
However, due to the large number of infringing goods, it is difficult to deal with them all.
"Currently, the problem of copyright infringement is becoming more and more prominent. The main reason is that there are many infringers, and most of them are individuals or individual industrial and commercial households. If a copyright owner needs to protect his rights, he needs to first apply to the platform to disclose the actual infringer's information through the platform's customer service or by filing a lawsuit with the court. Real-name registration information, and the copyright owner will pursue the infringement responsibility through prosecution. In this way, the time cost of rights protection is very high, as short as three to six months, and as long as one or two years." Qi Tian said.
The information on Pinduoduo’s intellectual property protection platform shows that before users complain, they need to create a complaint account and upload identification materials, and then upload intellectual property materials and provide information on infringement complaints, and then the platform will follow up and provide feedback.
"Copyright owners have limited energy and cannot devote enough energy to finding infringement clues in rights protection, which leads to many infringers going unpunished and infringing acts intensifying. At present, there are some professional intellectual property rights protection agencies or law firms in the market, and it is recommended to go through these channels. , actively defend their legitimate rights and interests." Qi Tian said.