Beijing to tighten copyright on use of movie clips, in potential blow to short video apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou
- China’s National Copyright Administration said it will intensify its scrutiny of copyright infringements
- Moves comes after a call by TV and movie industry for more action on breaches by short video users
One type of short video that can often go viral on Chinese video-sharing apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou are ones that include clips from blockbuster films and popular television series. But in many instances, the copyright owner is neither notified or compensated and Beijing has signalled a crackdown.
China’s National Copyright Administration said at a press conference on Sunday that it will intensify its scrutiny of such copyright infringements, following a public call by film and television producers to end these practices. It said it would rectify any copyright infringements and order short video platforms to delete any content found to be in breach of the rules.
Yu Cike, head of the National Copyright Administration under the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, said the online short video industry had developed rapidly in recent years, however this had resulted in some “serious” copyright infringement issues, which “have come to the attention of the National Copyright Administration”.
The move comes after more than 70 domestic film and television companies, organisations, and more than 500 film industry workers made a joint statement last week to resist online short video infringement. The initiative calls for “short video platforms to actively participate in copyright content compliance governance, and immediately clean up” unauthorised film and television content. Streaming video platforms including Tencent Video, iQiyi as well as Youku, also signed up to the initiative.
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“[Short video platform] revenue and online traffic will drop in the short term,” said Jyh-an Lee, a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “However, in the long run, it is positive for the overall industry not only because copyright will be better protected, but also because user focus will be shifted to really creative short videos, instead of those that are free but infringe content copyright.”
ByteDance and Kuaishou did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the watchdog’s proposed crackdown.
Lee said that the TV and film industry in China faces two threats from short-video sharing platforms. The first is where “popular films and TV episodes are divided into many short videos and illegally shared online”. For example, a search on Douyin showed that the popular TV drama “Empresses in the Palace” can be found chopped into 223 short videos by an account called “Tangtang Jianji”. The videos have been watched more than 300 million times in total, and are still currently available.
The second threat, according to Lee, is where “short videos are produced as condensed versions or brief summaries of popular TV dramas and films”. “You can watch these short videos for [a] few minutes and get the gist of the central storyline or the end result of a long drama,” he said.
Yu said the National Copyright Administration has, since 2018, put short video copyright issues as a key task under “Jianwang”, a government campaign against online copyright infringement and piracy.
In February, the China-Audio Video Copyright Association (CAVCA), a Chinese copyright organisation, demanded that Kuaishou delete an initial 10,000 videos from its platform for alleged infringement of music copyright, just days before the company made its stock market debut in Hong Kong.
China had 818 million short video app users as of the end of June 2020, according to a report from the China Netcasting Services Association in October. Douyin, TikTok’s sister app and operated by Beijing-based ByteDance, had 600 million daily active users as of August.
Kuaishou Technology, whose market cap was close to 1.1 trillion yuan as of Monday, had 271.3 million daily active users on its main app, according to its fourth quarter financial results.
