Frequent handling, plagiarism, and embezzlement
Original short video blogger: who will protect my creativity
The post-95 Changsha girl Xiao Chen (pseudonym) has recently encountered an annoyance: her original video "rental house renovation storage", which she posted on the Douyin platform for only one day, was "smuggled" by a stranger to the Kuaishou platform and marked as " Transform the case" to attract business.
Not long ago, the 47th "Statistical Report on China's Internet Development Status" released by the China Internet Network Information Center showed that as of December 2020, the number of short video users in China was 873 million, an increase of 100 million from March 2020, accounting for 88.3% of netizens as a whole.
The explosive growth of short videos has become a cultural phenomenon that is produced, participated and shared by the whole people.
At the same time, more and more young people have taken up new professional positions as short video bloggers, but incidents of cross-platform "smuggling" and plagiarism are not uncommon.
Some netizens complained on social media, "The video clips on the short video platform are copied and copied, nothing new."
Many short video bloggers like Xiao Chen have asked: How do I apply for protection for the original video I published?
What should I do if my video idea is plagiarized?
Cross-platform handling, copying ideas, etc., make original short video bloggers miserable
After registering the "Geography Class Representative" account on the Douyin platform for two and a half years, Xiao Chen made short videos of daily life records and perceptions, and has gained nearly 700,000 fans so far.
On March 12, at the request of fans, she filmed and edited the video of "Rental House Bedroom Renovation and Storage", which immediately received 76,000 likes.
Unexpectedly, only one day after the video was released, many fans told her in private messages that her video was forwarded to the Kuaishou platform by others intact.
Xiao Chen saw that his video was not only removed from the watermark and moved to other platforms, but also used by copyists to solicit business. "You can pay 100 yuan to renovate the house." Xiao Chen was very angry. "The copyist was attacked on the night of March 13th. It was released on the Kuaishou platform. It hasn't been 24 hours, and the number of views has reached nearly 2 million, and the number of likes is about 70,000.
At noon on March 14, Xiao Chen tried to send a private message to the plagiarism to prove his identity as the original author, but he did not get any reply.
"As a video blogger, we will always pay attention to the account information, it is impossible not to see the private messages." After waiting for a long time, there is still no reply. Xiao Chen can only contact the Kuaishou platform and upload the original link and personal information according to the platform requirements. The proof material, fortunately, got a reply from the platform quickly, "The video has been removed from the platform, and the plagiarism has also blocked me."
Reporters consulted Kuaishou, Douyin, Station B, Xiaohongshu and other related regulations related to short video sharing platforms and found that the platform can click on the corresponding logo on the video playback page to directly enter the reporting page. The infringements that can be reported include copyright, trademark, and privacy violations. Rights, reputation rights, etc., as well as portability, plagiarism and misappropriation of others’ works.
Xiao Chen expressed "still very satisfied" for the plagiarism videos being quickly removed from the platform.
Similar to Xiao Chen's experience, Yan Hong, the original handmade blogger of Station B, has encountered this type of "cross-platform handling" plagiarism many times, but this time she encountered "upgraded" the methods of plagiarism.
Yanhong was a plagiarist who was discovered through private messages from fans. The original design video she released in 2019 was plagiarized by an account on the Douyin platform. The plagiarized video became a popular video on the platform that day.
"Your headgear design for "Shan Hai Jing" is inspired by my work. The similarity is very high. You need to mark some design inspiration sources and mark the original author." When Yanhong contacted the account and asked to mark the original author, he got The other party responded sincerely.
I thought it was resolved in this way, but I didn't expect that the other party had been procrastinating on the grounds of "unable to operate". Under Yanhong's urging in every possible way, the other party just left a comment in the comment area.
Yan Hong was helpless, "Fans have been leaving comments under the infringing video to circle our account, and we also turned the original video to the top, but the other party did not make a special explanation as required and put it on the top, and has been deleting fan comments."
More and more fans "holding injustice" for Yanhong, Yanhong contacted the infringer again, demanding that the video be removed from the law and apologized.
But the other person said: "Don't you post the tutorial videos to let the friends who like to do crafts learn from each other?"
"We encourage fans to learn. The premise is that they cannot be commercialized, but they also need to know what is original. The 95% similarity is no longer original but plagiarism." Yan Hong said frankly that many fans will learn from her work tutorials. Upload your own production video, but you will always mark the source, "but this time, the other party simply replied to a comment, don't stick to the top or circle the original author, who can see it? The mark of originality is the minimum respect and attitude."
Because the video applied for original protection on the original platform, when she was about to ask the original platform’s legal department to send a lawyer’s letter to the infringer, the infringer apologized in a private message and hid the infringing video.
What is the difficulty of "creative protection" in the short video industry
As the public's awareness of originality protection increases, handling plagiarism is the easiest infringement for all video sharing platforms to deal with. As long as the original source can be proven, infringing videos will be processed quickly.
As early as April 2019, “Yi Yi” from the media was sentenced to infringement and compensated 500,000 yuan by the court for reprinting short videos created by others without authorization for the promotion of a certain brand of cars. This is the first case in the country where short videos infringe copyrights by using short videos in advertisements. It is also the case with the highest amount of compensation for short videos so far.
In the eyes of Xiao Chen and Yanhong, taking off the shelves of infringing videos is already a good way to deal with them, but they are all "treating the symptoms rather than the root cause."
Xiao Chen had been imitated and even "fell out" with her friends. "I have a high daily flow of shooting myself. After a friend saw it, she also imitated the shooting. The style and shooting methods were similar." This made her Very angry but helpless, "Once I broke the update, and another imitation account was also closed. Because it was an imitation, the platform has no way to deal with this. I wrote the scripts and copywriting seriously, why others can easily get them Go to plagiarize and use?"
"Different from completely copying and copying, the infringement form of plagiarism is more concealed. Due to the lack of professional and authoritative guidance, it is difficult for short video platform managers to directly define and directly deal with its illegality. This does have its own difficulties."
For a long time focusing on the field of intellectual property protection, Zhang Ying, a lawyer from Beijing Gaowen Law Firm, told reporters, “The higher the similarity of the two works and the more overlapping details, the greater the possibility of infringement. Is the imitated video a reasonable reference or Plagiarism requires specific analysis of specific issues. If it is only extremely vaguely similar, or just reminiscent of another work, it does not necessarily constitute infringement."
Although it is difficult to define creative plagiarism, it is worth noting that the newly revised "Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China" will come into effect on June 1 this year and improve the definition of "work".
The Beijing Internet Court stated in a short video hotspot case that short videos that can reflect the individual expression of the producer and bring spiritual enjoyment to the audience are original and constitute works.
For the original videos of short video bloggers, Zhang Ying suggested that you should pay attention to keeping the evidence of the creation process, including but not limited to scripts, communication records, original documents, etc.; after the work is completed, it is best to register the work in time, and the work registration certificate can be Fixing information such as the specific time of creation and publication of the work is one of the important evidences in the litigation, which will play an important role in the future process of rights protection.
At present, Yanhong has registered fine art works in the local "Sichuan Copyright Comprehensive Service Platform" and is awaiting review.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Meng Peipei