The digital collection bought for 100,000 yuan became "waste"
Expert: Introduce relevant laws and regulations to implement “regulatory sandbox”
Our reporter Wang Chun
Correspondent Lu Jiahui
100,000 yuan wasted!
Mr. Sun from Zhejiang recently recalled his experience of purchasing digital collections with regrets: He has invested 100,000 yuan in purchasing digital collections since last year, but due to forced replacement by the platform, his digital collections have become "pledge cards" (a kind of Picture collections with large circulation but low value are usually used to synthesize digital collections with higher value and cannot be traded normally) and are "equivalent to scraps."
Digital collections originate from the concept of NFT (Non-Fungible Token). Blockchain technology is used to generate unique digital certificates for specific works, artworks, etc., and realize authentic and credible digital distribution, purchase, and collection on the basis of protecting their digital copyrights. and use.
In recent years, the digital collection industry has continued to grow and develop. According to data, there are more than 1,400 domestic digital collection platforms. These platforms have various gameplay methods, including "rush buying", "blind box", "airdrop", "synthesis", "replacement", "points redemption", etc., and there are many traps hidden behind these fancy gameplay methods. For example, in the name of increasing the value of digital collections, the platform allows players to participate in activities and replace digital collections under their own names into "pledge cards"; collections under the names of players who do not participate in the activities will be forcibly removed from the shelves or replaced by Other collection fragments that are not valuable.
A reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" found that many consumers of digital collections complained that points could not be redeemed, platform synthesis activities were fraudulent, and blind boxes were induced to be purchased. On the third-party complaint platform, there were more than 3,000 complaints related to digital collections. At the same time, in the transaction process of digital collections, price speculation, false propaganda, and infringement issues frequently occur, and even major risk events such as illegal fund-raising and fraud "runaways" occur.
Industry experts pointed out that the current laws and regulations related to my country's digital collection market are not perfect, resulting in frequent infringement and chaos in the digital collection market. It is recommended to clarify the issuing entities and circulation and use rules of digital collections, and severely punish the use of digital collections for illegal fund-raising, money laundering and other illegal and criminal activities. At the same time, innovate supervision methods, increase inspection efforts, establish digital collection integrity files, and standardize platform behavior.
Transaction information keeps flooding the screen
Buying and selling disputes occur frequently
"A picture with a starting price of 4,000 yuan can be sold for 80,000 yuan in just two days." Mr. Zhang, a player on the "HOTDOG" digital collection platform, told reporters.
The reporter randomly clicked on the price increase and decrease chart of a digital collection on the platform, and saw that the red and green lines on the chart crossed, with the red line representing the highest price and the green line representing the lowest price. Within one minute, the price of the collection rose from 380 yuan to 415 yuan, but within an hour, the price dropped to 388 yuan.
The platform has also launched a consignment service, which means players can directly resell digital collections through the platform.
During the interview, the reporter found that many digital collection applications are open for trading. Taking "Whale Detective" as an example, a reporter asked customer service whether digital collections can be resold, and the reply was that "any digital collections are not allowed to be resold, speculated, traded over-the-counter, fraudulently, or used in any other illegal way." When the reporter joined the exchange group in the name of a player, he saw that the group was filled with a large amount of transaction information about digital collections from “Whale Explorer” and other platforms.
In a "number one collection exchange group" with 358 members, comments such as "Blind box snatching at 11 o'clock tomorrow, honest cooperation, regardless of rise or fall", "Collect all collections on ×× platform, package them all together", "Refund at a high price" Collectibles, collections for sale are welcome” and other speculation messages are constantly flooding the screen. In the topic of digital collections on relevant online platforms, information about selling and acquiring digital collections at high prices is also common.
In the exchange market, the price of digital collections fluctuates greatly. For example, "Whale Detective"'s previous digital collection "Yue Wang Sword", which was sold out as early as 2021 with an issue price of 19.9 yuan, is now priced at more than 2,500 yuan on second-hand platforms such as Xianyu.
The income generated from the huge price difference has made many people smell the business opportunities. The secondary trading of digital collections has therefore become one of the investment channels for many players. Along with this, there are more and more transactions. dispute.
In 2023, the People's Court of Pujiang County, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province heard a case involving a transaction dispute in the secondary market of digital collections. In this case, the plaintiff and the defendant had previously reached a transaction agreement to purchase 58 collections in the digital collection platform "Huanhe" App for 1,100 yuan, and signed a sales contract. However, "Huanhe" subsequently issued an announcement to stop the issuance of digital collections. , the plaintiff was unable to obtain the collection, but the defendant refused to return the purchase price due to lack of money. The plaintiff sued the defendant to return the purchase price of 1,100 yuan, pay liquidated damages of 1,000 yuan to the plaintiff, and the defendant should bear the legal fees.
The Pujiang Court ruled that the defendant should return the purchase price of 1,100 yuan to the plaintiff on the grounds that "my country has not opened the secondary market for digital collections."
The reporter noticed that the "Decision of the State Council on Cleaning up and Rectifying Various Trading Venues to Effectively Prevent Financial Risks" and the "Implementation Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Cleaning up and Rectifying Various Trading Venues" have the following provisions on digital collection trading platforms:
Any trading venue is not allowed to split any equity into equal shares for public issuance, and is not allowed to use centralized bidding, market making and other centralized trading methods to conduct transactions; equity is not allowed to be continuously listed and traded according to standardized trading units, and any investor buys and then sells. Or the time interval between buying and selling the same trading variety shall not be less than 5 trading days; unless otherwise provided by laws and administrative regulations, the total number of equity holders shall not exceed 200. No unit is allowed to conduct standardized contract transactions through centralized bidding, electronic matching, anonymous trading, market making and other centralized trading methods.
On September 4, 2022, the China International Fair for Trade in Services "World Frontier Technology Conference-Yuanverse and Digital Economy Forum" released the "Compliance Evaluation Guidelines for Digital Collections", which clarified that digital collections can only be transferred for use purposes and cannot be used for speculation. , money laundering, tokenization, financialization, securitization and other listed or private illegal transactions.
Moving other people’s works for sale
Intellectual property compliance cannot be ignored
The release process of a digital collection can be divided into the following steps: first, the original author creates and generates works in the form of pictures, videos, artworks, etc., and then the publisher digitizes these works so that they can be stored in a network database.
Secondly, the issuer uploads the digitized works to the digital collection platform for review. After the platform successfully reviews, the corresponding works will be "on-chain", that is, stored on the blockchain on which it relies, so that the digital collection will be on the blockchain. Once pinned, the work can be seen by any user on the platform and can be purchased on the platform. At this point, the issuance process of a digital collection is completed.
However, the risk of infringement of digital collections often arises during this process.
On the homepage of the digital collection app "HOTDOG", there are many digital collections with images of the protagonists of film and television works such as "Naruto", "Boiling Sheep" and "Hua Qiangu", but these collections only have relevant brief introductions of the authors. The licensor and issuer are not identified.
The reporter sent a consultation email to the official contact email of "HOTDOG" to ask whether these digital collections are authorized by film and television, but has not yet received a response.
On April 20, 2022, the Hangzhou Internet Court held a public hearing in accordance with the law and heard a "Fat Tiger Vaccination" infringement dispute case involving digital collections.
In this case, a user openly transferred his illustration work "Fat Tiger Vaccination" to the "Metaverse" digital collection platform for sale without the permission of the comic author Ma Qianli. The plaintiff, who enjoys the exclusive copyright property rights and rights protection rights of the illustration work worldwide, found out and took the "Metaverse" digital collection platform to court.
"In this case, as a professional digital collection platform, 'Yuanverse' not only failed to fulfill its intellectual property protection obligations, but also failed to review the digital collection works released on the platform, and also charged a certain amount during the transaction process of this illustration. Proportional transaction fees have constituted assistance in infringement." Judge Ye Shengnan told reporters.
On December 30, 2022, the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court of Zhejiang Province made a second-instance judgment on the case, holding that the platform involved in the case infringed the right of information network dissemination in the copyright of the work by casting and publishing digital collections without the permission of the copyright owner.
Cui Chunhua, a partner and intellectual property lawyer at Beijing Deheheng Law Firm, said in an interview with reporters that digital collection platforms, as network service providers, should exercise reasonable care for possible infringements on the platform and fulfill corresponding infringement notices and The obligation to take necessary measures to stop the infringement. Otherwise, the network service provider may be jointly and severally liable with the network user for failing to take necessary measures despite knowingly knowing the infringement.
Cui Chunhua believes that digital collection platforms must pay special attention to intellectual property compliance in their operations to avoid the risk of intellectual property infringement, including copyright. Therefore, it is necessary to build an effective copyright ownership confirmation and review mechanism, set up smooth channels for infringement complaints, and pre-divide responsibilities through agreements to further reduce the risk of infringement.
Strengthen supervision and reduce risks
Establish Shuzang integrity file
In order to rectify and standardize the digital collection industry, a series of explorations and practices have been carried out in many places in my country.
On April 22, 2022, the first standardized trading platform for digital collections "Xu Qi Shu Zang" promoted by the relevant departments of the Hangzhou Municipal Government in Zhejiang Province was officially launched;
On April 26, 2022, the Yuanshi Industry Committee of the China Mobile Communications Federation and the Blockchain Professional Committee of the China Communications Industry Association jointly issued the "Self-discipline Requirements for Regulating the Healthy Development of the Digital Collection Industry";
On January 29, 2023, Hainan Province issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Risk Supervision of Digital Collections", pointing out that the hidden risks of fraud, money laundering, pyramid schemes, illegal fund-raising, etc. in digital collections cannot be ignored, and requires strengthening cooperation to form departmental coordination. Regulatory mechanism…
Xu Hong, deputy to the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress and deputy director of Zhejiang Boning Law Firm, suggested that relevant laws, regulations and policy documents should be promulgated as soon as possible, and a “regulatory sandbox” should be implemented to prevent and resolve criminal risks related to digital collections.
"Regulatory sandbox" is a concept proposed by the British Financial Conduct Authority in 2015. Simply put, it refers to a supervised security testing area that allows companies to test innovative products and services in a real market environment with real individual users and business users by setting restrictive conditions and formulating risk management measures. and business models, which can help reduce the time and potential costs for innovative ideas to enter the market and reduce regulatory uncertainty.
"Currently, my country has not yet formed clear legal regulations on the various transaction rules, technical service support, and penalties for violations of digital collections. The norms and standards for the supervision of digital collections are still in the blank stage. As a result, when improper behavior occurs in the digital collection industry, there is a lack of relevant penalties. According to the law, the punishment is seriously insufficient, which has also led to a surge in the number of petition cases to a certain extent." Xu Hong believes that the long-term healthy development of digital collections mainly relies on the provision of corresponding institutional guarantees at the legal level. Through the implementation of the "regulatory sandbox", we can Clarify the issuing entities and circulation and use rules, such as determining that digital collections generated by public power entities and private entities should be granted licenses, and severely punish the use of digital collections for illegal fund-raising, money laundering and other illegal and criminal activities; ban or restrict some digital assets based on existing substantive regulations The transaction of certificates determines the legality rules for the casting and circulation of digital collections.
“By opening up a ‘regulatory sandbox’ as a test field and testing digital collection products, we not only achieve flexible government supervision, promote cooperation between the government and regulatory targets, but also protect consumers of digital collection platforms. , to prevent risks." Xu Hong pointed out that in terms of supervision of digital collection platforms, collaboration between various departments should be strengthened. The development and reform department, as the functional department that proposes price control targets and policy recommendations for digital collections, should organize the drafting of relevant valuation pricing and For the draft and policy of platform charging regulations, the market supervision department will implement a filing system after the market development enters a stable period, evaluate the valuation framework and pricing model adopted by each platform, and propose rectification opinions. At the same time, we innovate supervision methods, intensify inspections, establish integrity files for digital collections, and continue to follow up and standardize platform behavior.
Regarding cases involving digital collections, Xu Hong suggested improving the evidence collection capabilities of investigators in cases involving digital collections, fixing relevant data carriers as soon as possible, verifying trading platform data and information, and preventing relevant personnel from hiding, transferring or even destroying evidence. A joint prevention and case-handling working group of multiple departments including petitions, market supervision, public security, and procuratorial departments has been established to form a joint investigation mechanism. For new types of cases such as blockchain technology and digital collections, we will conduct chain-type research and judgment in advance from administrative supervision to criminal crackdowns to catch the smallest cases early. (Legal Daily)