Chinanews client, Beijing, August 19 (Reporter Song Yusheng and Shan Lu) Have you ever had such experience: inadvertently brushing a play, a movie, or a variety show on a short video Video platform chasing drama. But will these short videos have copyright issues?

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Are there any copyrights to the dramas that are pursued on Douyin?

  I don't know since when, more and more people started to follow dramas, watch movies, and watch variety shows through short videos.

  People only need to swipe short video platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, Station B on their mobile phones to understand the key plot trends and highlights.

  In these short videos, the editor bloggers will introduce the essence of the plot, the highlights of the show, and will also extract the "sweet points" or "pain points", and give some of their own comments. Some bloggers have attracted a large number of fans because of their sharp comments and unique style.

  But are these short videos copyrighted?

  This is just a small branch of short videos involving copyright issues.

  The “2019 China Online Copyright Monitoring Report” released by the third-party copyright service agency 12426 Copyright Monitoring Center in April this year pointed out that short video/self-media has become the mainstream of online communication, but at the same time, there are handling, editing, song and song adaptation, cover, and singing in the short video field. Infringement risks such as background music and pictures.

  On August 19, the Beijing Intellectual Property Court held a briefing on the trial of short video copyright cases.

  Zhang Xiaoxia, President of the Trial Supervision Division of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, said that with the rapid popularity of new media platforms such as Douyin, Volcano, Kuaishou, and Pear Video, short videos have gradually become the Internet due to the rapid and timely reception of online information. Of an emerging industry. At the same time, the production and dissemination of short videos has brought new challenges to copyright protection.

Netizens urged bloggers on the short video platform. Comment screenshot

These situations are infringements!

  How to define the copyright of short videos?

  Zhang Xiaoxia introduced that from the perspective of copyright law, the expressions completed independently constitute works.

  Therefore, as long as a short video has an original expression and conforms to the "Copyright Law", it is a work created in a similar way to filming.

  Judging from the cases accepted by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, there are mainly the following types of infringements: one is to provide short videos made by others to the Internet for dissemination; the other is to use other people’s works to make short videos through performances, etc.; the third is to use others The completed videos or works are recombined to produce short videos and are provided to the Internet for dissemination.

  Judge Cui Yuhang of the Trial Supervision Division of Beijing Intellectual Property Court shared several copyright infringement cases involving short videos.

  In the ByteDance v. iQiyi case, the plaintiff Byte Company claimed that iQiyi.com, operated by the defendant iQiyi, provided users with a short video online broadcast service of the interview program "Guo Degang talks about nightlife experiences in different places" without its permission. Violated its right of information network dissemination.

  Although such works are short videos of talk shows, they include subtitles, screen insertions, voice-overs, camera switching, special effects, and close-ups. At the end of the program, there are guests who ask the host questions and the host answers, through the camera switching, screen The selection of shooting, post-editing and other processes are completed, and the continuous images reflect the producer's unique perspective and personalized choices and judgments, and express the thought content related to the theme.

  The court found that the originality of the content of the variety show video in the case met the requirements for works created in a similar way to filming movies, and constituted a work created in a similar way to filming movies.

  Therefore, such works are of course also protected by the Copyright Law.

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"Fair use"

  Going back to our original question, are those videos on short video platforms that use one minute to interpret a movie and comment on TV series infringement?

  Judge Feng Gang of the Trial Supervision Division of Beijing Intellectual Property Court pointed out that according to the "Regulations for the Implementation of the Copyright Law", works that do not affect the normal use of works or unreasonably harm the legitimate interests of copyright owners are generally regarded as "fair use." In judicial practice, the court usually holds that "substantial substitution of the original work is not fair use. If there is no substantive substitution, it can be judged as fair use."

  Feng Gang believes that “if there is no substantive substitution, using part of the content of a work to introduce and comment on a work is fair use.”

  Article 22 of the Copyright Law imposes restrictions on rights and stipulates twelve specific conditions for "fair use", that is, if the conditions are met, the right holder does not need to obtain permission or pay remuneration. Short videos involve a lot of material, and in the case of other people’s works, it is also necessary to consider whether it constitutes "fair use".

  However, the determination of fair use needs to be judged based on the specific case and the comprehensive use situation. In principle, it must not affect the normal use of the original work, and it has to reasonably damage the legitimate interests of the copyright owner.

  At the same time, Zhang Xiaoxia, director of the Copyright Committee of the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and president of the Trial Supervision Division, also pointed out that such issues involve many details. When the judge decides, every detail of the case may change the qualitative change.

  Zhang Xiaoxia said, “As the cultural life continues to prosper, each of us may be a copyright owner. If the infringement is not in place, it will eventually affect the enthusiasm of creation. On the other hand, while protecting the right owner, we cannot Make it difficult for Internet users. We must make judgments based on specific facts and laws between protecting rights holders and encouraging cultural dissemination." (End)