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According to reports, recently, Biquge’s annual revenue of 6.2 billion pirated online articles has caused heated discussions among netizens. “Biquge” was born in 2012. After its founder achieved financial freedom due to pirated web articles, he published the open source code of “Biquge” related websites and how to build a website. 100 yuan can build a novel station. Relying on “moving” novel chapters, the platform earns at least 6.2 billion yuan in illegal income annually. A senior person in the online literature industry said that Biquge will not move finished novels, but only steal the content that is being updated, which has led to a sharp drop in the income of writers.
On May 26, the Copyright Association of China held a press conference on the “2021 China Online Literature Copyright Protection and Development Report” (hereinafter referred to as the “Report”). Among them, the discussion on infringement issues aroused heated discussions.
In addition to recording the practice, challenges and prospects of online copyright protection in the content of the “Report”, the Writing Committee of the China Copyright Association has also joined forces with 20 provincial-level online writers’ associations, Jinjiang Literature City, China Literature Group and other 12 online literature platforms and 522 online writers, including Tang Jiasan Shao, Yueguan, Fenghuo Opera Princes, Priest, and Squid Who Loves Diving, jointly released the Joint Proposal for Copyright Protection of Online Literature (hereinafter referred to as the “Proposal”), which is the largest one in the online literature industry. collective appeal.
The “Report” pointed out that in 2021, the scale of China’s online literature industry will reach 35.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.1%. The IP full copyright operation of online literature has driven a market of about 303.7 billion yuan in games, animation, music, and audio.
However, while China’s online literature is developing rapidly, the online literature industry will lose 6.2 billion yuan in piracy in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 2.8%. It is conservatively estimated that it has occupied 17.3% of the industry’s market share. As of December 2021, the overall monthly active users of piracy platforms were 43.71 million, accounting for 14.1% of online reading users. On most online literature platforms, more than 80% of their works are pirated every year; 82.6% of online writers are deeply affected by piracy, and more than 40% of them frequently experience piracy.
The “Report” also pointed out that pirated platforms, search engines and application markets have become the main channels for online literature piracy and infringement.
Piracy platforms headed by “Biquge” are also the object of condemnation in this “Report” and “Proposal”. “Biquge” was one of the earliest platforms for reading pirated novels in China. It attracted a large number of users and traffic by the free reading of the works, and was later closed down according to law. However, “Biquge” still has many sites, and many sites evade supervision and piracy through foreign servers, so it still has a very bad impact on these creation platforms and creators.
As the entrance to the Internet, search engines have gradually developed into the primary platform for readers to obtain pirated content. Nearly 70% of online literature platforms and nearly 80% of writers believe that search engines are the main way to spread pirated content of online literature. Among them, the three functions of search engine bidding ranking, aggregated links and transcoding reading have intensified the spread of pirated content. Taking bidding ranking as an example, many pirated platforms have even more weight than genuine platforms, appearing at the top of search results and prominently displayed advertising positions, which have played a misleading role on readers.
There are also many loopholes in the management of reading apps in the app market. Most of the app markets are not rigorous in their review of app listings, lack of traceability and review of the app uploader’s business attributes, license qualifications, work authorization, etc., and weaker control over app infringements. Taking “Biquge” as an example, it has a number of apps with the same name or similar names in various application markets, and the phenomenon of “piracy is also pirated” has appeared.
“Low cost of illegality and high cost of rights protection” is the core reason for the increasingly rampant piracy of online literature. Combating piracy requires the joint efforts of many parties, but the “Report” points out that the responsibilities of search engines and application market players are not clear, which increases the difficulty of copyright protection. Therefore, they released the “Proposal” at the press conference, calling on search engines and application markets to strengthen their copyright awareness, promptly clean up pirated sites and apps that have infringed piracy, and open up the right of rights holders to complain directly.
In such a difficult environment for rights protection, the writers and online text platforms still did not give up, and they worked closely together to develop their own rights protection positions. In April of this year, the industry’s first piracy reporting and publicity platform “National Anti-Piracy Alliance” was officially launched. The alliance is jointly initiated by a number of well-known writers, and the online text platform provides technical support to provide writers with a rights protection position of “discovery at any time, uploading at any time, and publicity at any time”, allowing writers and readers to report key infringement channels in a centralized manner. Promote the rectification of infringing channels. Since its launch, the “National Anti-Piracy Alliance” has received information submitted by more than 100 writers, and has exposed more than 2,000 piracy clues.
Source: Interface News
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