After the rapid growth, the script killing needs to make up for a rule of law lesson
On the weekend, Lin Li invited friends to have a dinner together and made an appointment for dinner at 6 o'clock. As a result, two of the 6 people were half an hour late-they just finished a round of script killing, and another friend played yesterday.
Lin Li and his friends are in their thirties, and they are not the first to try the trendy gameplay. I asked the young people around me randomly, and it seems that there are only a few people who have never played the script to kill. Three Kingdoms Killing, Werewolf Killing, Room Escape, the board game wind vane is constantly changing, and now the phenomenon-level offline social gathering method, script killing has its place.
In the process of such rapid development, the legal problems of the script killing industry are inevitably accumulating. At the just-concluded National Two Sessions this year, many representatives also paid attention to the standardization of the script killing industry.
From a new game to the formation of an industrial chain
Over the past five years, the market for script killing has expanded rapidly.
According to the "2021 Entity Script Killing Consumption Insight Report" released by Meituan, it is estimated that the market size of China's physical script killing in 2021 will reach 15.42 billion yuan, and the number of consumers will reach 9.41 million.
Users under the age of 30 account for 75%.
Among the friends who were half an hour late, Chen Xing was a senior player. While feeling the charm of script killing, he also saw this emerging market.
At the beginning of 2021, he and two friends jointly invested and opened a script killing shop in his hometown of Changsha, Hunan, and another local friend who also likes script killing will manage it daily.
When his store opened, the industry already had a relatively complete upstream and downstream industry chain.
Since the first half of 2019, about 1.2 to 1.4 new scripts have appeared every day. The best-selling scripts have been "feeding back" by IP, and distribution studios have emerged one after another. Many film and television companies have also opened up separate script killing sections.
Some stores have developed into chain brands, and online distribution platforms such as "Little Black Detective" have been well-recognized in the industry. Some investment institutions and companies such as Tencent and iQiyi have deployed in the field of script killing.
In the market space, Script Killing has expanded into variety shows such as "Star Detective", as well as some super-large immersive projects of cultural tourism brands.
In the derivative link, bloggers who do game evaluations have emerged on various platforms such as station B, and there has also been training for creators.
Excellent works are not easy to piracy rampant
In these links, Bie Biliang, deputy to the National People's Congress and deputy editor-in-chief of Chongqing Publishing Group, paid attention to the piracy and infringement of script killing.
Script Killing is a real-life role-playing game, with the script as the core, guided by the host, players through multiple rounds of evidence, discussion, reasoning, to decipher the murderer's motives and methods of crime, and finally vote who is the real murderer, and the The host announces the truth.
Because he likes to play script killing, Long Xin, who was originally engaged in the film and television industry, renovated the second floor of the company into two immersive script killing rooms, and created two exclusive scripts by himself.
From 2021, she began to try to do script distribution and signed several writers.
Although people who join the industry are constantly emerging, Long Xin really feels that it is not so easy to create a good script.
"A novel or a film and television drama must have a main line, with a protagonist and a supporting role, but the script killing the script needs to create its own story line for each player, so that everyone feels that they are the protagonist. In addition, not only must To ensure the integrity and readability of the story, it is necessary to blur some key links and find ways to set up interactive nodes to guide players to reason." Long Xin said.
Although creation is not easy, piracy is easy.
"As long as you go to play once and take pictures, you can bring out the script completely." An industry insider who is engaged in script distribution in Changsha, Hunan told reporters that there are many pirated scripts sold on Taobao, Xianyu and other apps.
And "a script can only be played once in a lifetime", so piracy means the loss of potential customers for creators and distributors.
"The loss could be as much as 50% of the profit."
According to Chen Xing, the scripts of script killing are divided into three categories: boxed, limited and exclusive.
Among them, the boxed distribution is the most, with small profits but quick turnover. Every store can buy it from the distribution platform, and the price ranges from 468 yuan to 648 yuan.
The scripts that the publishers are more optimistic about are usually issued in a city-limited manner, that is, a city only authorizes a few stores to use them, and the price ranges from 1,888 yuan to 2,688 yuan.
On the Xianyu App, the price of a script can be as low as 2 yuan.
For piracy, practitioners generally feel that there is no substantive solution.
"Many players have joined a lot of script killing WeChat groups. If a pirated store is found, he will send a message to the group, or go to the public comment app to comment. Everyone knows that this store is a store that uses pirated copies, and will consciously boycott it. "Chen Xing said.
The aforementioned industry insiders feel that there are still many customers who only play once in a while and do not know whether the script is genuine or not, but they will be attracted by the cheap prices of pirated stores. nearly a hundred dollars."
As a publisher, his method is to search for apps such as Dianping. "I searched for the script in the city and found that an unauthorized store is using it. It must be a pirated copy. We will negotiate with these stores and ask them to offline the script."
And if negotiation fails, few people will go to prosecution and other ways to solve the problem.
Zhang Xiaona, a senior lawyer at Beijing Pushengda Law Firm, believes that there is a big difference in the litigation situation between script killings and film and television works. First of all, film and television works such as TV dramas are new works created on the basis of original works such as novels, and they need to be subject to the rights and interests of the original works. The dual restriction of the rights of deductive works, the presentation needs to go through multiple links of script creation, actor performance, film shooting, and post-production, and involves a wider range of intellectual property legal protection.
Secondly, the copyright protection of film and television works is more mature in terms of laws and regulations, judicial judgment cases, etc.
Third, in judicial practice, the infringement of film and television works is more obvious, it is relatively easy to obtain evidence, and the amount of compensation for infringement is relatively large.
Judicial cases are emerging
Now things have changed.
Entering 2022, the copyright dispute case of "The Diary of a Sick Boy", known as "the first case of domestic script killing rights protection", will be heard in the Tianxin District People's Court of Changsha City, Hunan Province.
From June 2021, a Changsha Animation Technology Co., Ltd. found that its popular script killing works had been pirated in large numbers, and the lowest price of pirated copies was only about 1/5 of the genuine ones. According to incomplete statistics, these infringements caused the company to endure more than two million-dollar losses.
In court, the defendants in two cases admitted the fact of infringement in court and reached settlement after the court; the defendant in one case reached settlement before the court session, and the defendant in the other case was absent from the court hearing, and the case will be pronounced on a scheduled date.
In the comment area of the news report on this case, some netizens left a message: "The second case will be held after the Spring Festival." "A contract dispute case involving script killing and entrustment created by my team's lawyers will be tried in the Yuhua District Court of Changsha City"... It is expected that there will be more related cases to defend rights through litigation.
"The newly revised Copyright Law provides a lot of convenience for the copyright protection of screenplays. According to the Copyright Law, the works of natural persons, legal persons or unincorporated organizations, whether published or not, shall enjoy copyright in accordance with the law. That is to say, once the creation is completed, the The rights are automatically generated.” said Li Dan, senior partner of Beijing Hengdu (Hangzhou) Law Firm, so the rights of publication, authorship, modification, reproduction, distribution, performance rights, and information network dissemination rights related to the script are protected by law.
She gave specific examples. For example, some script killer stores actually used scripts without authorization from the publisher or distribution platform, which violated the other party's right to copy.
Some sellers sell electronic copies of copies online without permission, which is a violation of the rights holder's right to disseminate information on the Internet.
"In addition to original achievements such as scripts, pictures, etc., specific rules, gameplay, scenes and plots with original expressions are also protected by copyright law. In addition, there are also cases of trademark infringement." Zhang Xiaona introduced,
A few days ago, such a case was heard in Shanghai Putuo District People's Court.
Hunan Happy Sunshine Interactive Entertainment Media Co., Ltd. is the copyright owner of the "Star Detective" series of variety shows and the operating organization of "Mango TV". In the investment promotion, operation and promotion activities of the script killing service, the logos and words such as "Mango Detective Office" and "Star Detective" which are the same or similar to the registered trademark of the applicant are used in large quantities without permission.
In addition, in its WeChat public account and investment promotion information, etc., it claims that its store is a "mango TV strategic cooperation brand", and the script killing provided is "variety show genuine authorized exclusive script" "star detective live-action version" and so on.
Therefore, suspected trademark infringement and false publicity are the two main reasons for the company to apply for pre-litigation conduct preservation.
Combined with the evidence in the case, the Putuo District Court finally supported the applicant's claim.
Industry regulatory rules appear for the first time
For most of the infringed persons, although the legal provisions are relatively complete, the difficulty in practice lies in the collection of evidence and identification.
"The infringement of script killing may be a system, not limited to the copyright of text, but also illustrations, decorations, extended peripherals, performances, rules and gameplay, etc. It is difficult to distinguish and define, and evidence collection is also very cumbersome, and it is difficult for creators or publishers to complete it alone. In addition, the mainstream form of script killing is offline, and the distribution is very scattered. It is difficult for a creator in Shanghai to find out whether there are shops in Beijing that are infringing.” Zhang Xiaona said.
Many creators also mentioned that many scripts have "references" from British and Japanese detective novels in core plots such as modus operandi, and "the answers to the puzzles are also concentrated in 'loop', 'traveling', amnesia, schizophrenia and other sets. on the road".
If the other party does not completely plagiarize, but has carried out some "makeovers", it will be difficult to confirm the rights.
Li Dan suggested that creators should be aware of copyright registration. Whether it is scripts, illustrations, pictures, derivatives or unique designs, they can go to the Copyright Registration Center for registration. "The current process is very convenient."
Considering the core competitiveness of script killing, there is a sense of experience in addition to the story, and the sense of experience is completed by a series of factors, some of which have already formed a brand, and the brand party can consider trademark infringement in case of infringement.
If it is a complex and comprehensive infringement, including brand and script infringement, and other unique ideas are copied, the right holder can also consider the infringement of trade secrets, or sue for unfair competition.
Irregular contracts, scripts that play "edge balls", and the absolute right to speak to creators in big releases... The issues are complicated, but the law often comes into play after the infringement has occurred.
In order to reduce irregularities in the industry, the consensus is to improve the supervision of the industry and standardize the rules of the industry.
At the National Two Sessions this year, Sun Baolin, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the China Copyright Protection Center (China Copyright Agency Center), suggested that copyright should be used to guide the healthy development of script-killing new formats.
Through the platform, the front-end copyright of the script killing is registered and reviewed, and the copyright transaction is transparent to avoid the copyright dispute of the script.
Shanghai is the first city in the country to bring the script killing industry under supervision.
The "Interim Regulations on the Content Management of Script Killings in Secret Rooms in Shanghai" issued by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism came into effect on March 1, requiring operating units to strictly self-examine the content of the script, the scenes set, the costumes and props provided, etc. Record the content of the script.
The industry believes that with the emergence of regulatory rules, the script killing industry will bid farewell to extensive and barbaric growth and enter the era of supervision.
The establishment of the self-examination and filing system is also conducive to the copyright protection of the original creator of the script.
In addition, the "China Culture and Entertainment Industry Association Immersive Script Entertainment Professional Committee" was officially established in March last year.
Industry alliances are forming.
We traditionally refer to games as "entertainment", a supplement in life, but for today's young people, there may be a respite in gaming.
Chen Xing felt that he experienced different life feelings and professional scenes in the script killing, and he hoped that this experience would be more comfortable, longer and more advanced.
(Lin Li and Chen Xing are pseudonyms in the text)
(Reporter Chen Huijuan of this newspaper)