In recent years, the short video editing industry has gradually emerged, and platform content creators have streamlined the original video length through the form of editing and commentary to meet the fast-paced lifestyle of urban office workers.
At the same time, there are many controversies in the development process of the short video editing industry, among which the most concerned is the infringement of short video clips. In April this year, in order to curb the chaos in the industry, iQiyi, Youku, Tencent, Huace and other film and television platforms and upstream content companies signed a joint statement on film and television copyright protection, calling on short video clip operators to attach importance to copyright protection and avoid falling into the quagmire of infringement.
In order to further improve the quality of content and curb the spread of false content. On December 15, the China Online Audiovisual Program Service Association issued the Detailed Rules for the Standards for the Review of Online Short Video Content (2021), article 93 of which stipulates that short videos may not be edited or adapted from movies and television dramas without authorization.
There are many statements and details like this, and the interesting phenomenon is that the release of statements by many associations on short video clips often causes some netizens to question, and some even defend short video clips, so where is the root cause of this phenomenon?
Short video clips have become the "characteristics of the times"
The development of short video editing is inseparable from the rise of short video platforms, the most representative of which is undoubtedly Douyin, Kuaishou and B station. Compared with long video platforms such as "Aiyouteng", the time black hole attribute of "Jitter Beep" is stronger, and the "user-produced content attribute" of the platform is inherently suitable for users to shoot, edit and share videos. Therefore, in various industry statements on the "two innovations" of video cutting, the main participant is the long video platform, and the medium and short video platform is the beneficiary of short video editing.
From a social point of view, the pace of people's lives continues to accelerate, and life becomes more and more fragmented, which boosts the development of short video film and television editing. For many office workers, there isn't much time on weekdays to sit back and watch a 40-minute TV series or an hour-and-a-half movie, and the fast-paced clips are just right for watching on buses and subways. Aurora big data shows that in the third quarter of this year, the average daily usage time of users of Douyin and Kuaishou exceeded 130 minutes, far ahead of the average daily usage time of traditional long video platforms of less than 80 minutes.
Secondly, fast-paced short videos can compress our dwell time at a certain information point, thereby accelerating the frequency of information browsing. For example, the same 20 minutes of time, watching long videos can only watch half an episode of TV series, and the same time can watch several videos with different contents on the short and medium video platform, which can be news information, finance or historical literati, etc. Although this information is fragmented, at least it allows users to understand the general content, and sometimes "understand less" is more important than "not understanding at all".
A project launched by Caijing Network called "Will you watch film and television drama clips on the short video platform?" In the online voting, a total of 5301 netizens participated before the deadline of this article, of which the option of "not hiding it, watching the clip will go to see the original" received 3511 votes, accounting for 66.2%. The results reflect a real problem, and watching film and television clips on short video platforms has become one of the main ways for some users to screen film and television content.
Before the PC Internet was not popularized, users were TV broadcasting what to see, after the PC Internet popularization and then transitioned to the mobile Internet era, users have more choices in playing hardware and platform content, but it is easy to be ignored that "the choice itself is also a cost", and the cost of choosing the wrong one is generally not low.
Generally, the length of a domestic TV series is about 30 episodes, if you go directly to see, you often need to watch 1-2 episodes to determine whether a work is worth chasing, that is, users need to bear the cost of 40-80 minutes of chasing drama screening, which is difficult for many office workers to accept. Scoring-based websites such as Douban are "hard" in the form of digital informing users, while the display effect of film and television editing and reviews is more vivid, and the value of the drama can be further judged through video bullet screens and comments.
Short video film and television editing from the soil (social fast-paced development), stage (short video platform) to user value (content screening), forming a more complete set of industry development supply and demand cycle, it can even be said that short video film and television editing is the epitome of the life of some users in this era. It should be noted that directly with copyright video editing and explanation, uploading "XXX minutes to watch XXX drama" on the network infringes the rights of the copyright owner, which also reflects a new problem, how to solve the contradiction between the user's demand for short video film and television editing and the editor's infringement, if you directly clean up the film and television editing content in a one-size-fits-all manner, just cut off the content supply but the user's demand is still there.
The "Time War" between Medium and Short Video Platforms and Long Video Platforms
Judging from a number of industry statements, the controversy over short video film and television editing is actually the competition for user time between different video platforms. On the one hand, some of the content on the short and medium video platform does involve infringement, and some even have vulgar content, and the industry needs to further standardize the development; on the other hand, the film and television editing content is a key point for the short and medium video platform to circle users, and losing this part of the content may lose some users.
In today's Internet traffic is gradually peaking, major platforms are competing for users' residence time, for video platforms, whether they can retain users fundamentally from the platform content attractiveness, mainly including the quantity, quality and uniqueness of platform content. The materials of the short and medium video clip operators are mostly TV series and movies, and most of the copyrights are long video platforms, taking the content of their own platforms to create content uniqueness for medium and short video platforms, which is naturally intolerable for long video platforms, and iQiyi has sued Station B for copyright and other related issues.
The more embarrassing part is that for video clip creators, the long video platform itself is not suitable for the development of the video editing ecology, and can only deliver the manuscript to the short and medium video platform that has no video advertising, pays more attention to algorithm recommendation and has a more active community atmosphere. In this time war, how to define film and television editing infringement has become extremely critical.
Unlike some users who think that "all third-party film and television clips can be regarded as infringement", the author found after reviewing the Copyright Law that video clips in some cases are not infringing. Article 22 of Section 4 of the Copyright Law, "Restrictions on Rights", stipulates that for the purpose of individual study, research or appreciation, for the purpose of introducing or commenting on a certain work or explaining a certain issue, appropriately quoting a work published by others in a work", "without the permission of the copyright owner, no remuneration shall be paid to him, but the name of the author and the name of the work shall be indicated, and other rights enjoyed by the copyright owner in accordance with this Law shall not be infringed".
That is to say, the content of the introduction and comment direction can use the edited video under the premise of compliance, and the edited content of the pure whole set of plot commentary is considered infringing. In addition, because of the interpretation that "other rights enjoyed by the copyright owner in accordance with this Law shall not be infringed", the copyright owner can still sue the other party for infringement if it believes that the edited content infringes its own rights.
The detailed rules issued by the China Online Audio-visual Program Service Association are more direct, stipulating that "unauthorized self-cutting" is not allowed, because the association belongs to the industry's non-profit social institutions, so netizens are questioning the legal effect of its provisions, and may only be regarded as an industry self-discipline convention, which needs to be consciously complied with by relevant platforms. However, it is worth noting that the new rules of the China Online Audio-visual Program Service Association have been forwarded on the official website of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and the radio and television may personally introduce new regulations in the future.
For the ghost animal area of the B station full of joy, if it cannot be edited, it will directly make the UP owners have no video material source, or it will affect the content plate construction of the entire platform.
The author believes that the release of the detailed rules means that the "time war" of long and short videos has risen to the level of industry associations. The market cake is so big, the rise of vibrato, kuaishou and B station so that the original pattern is unbalanced, in recent years, the increase in domestic low-quality TV series, causing the user's disgust, Beijing Business Daily also published an article titled "Don't let the "Divine Comedy" and "Divine Drama" go on again", some domestic "Divine Drama" let users disappointed in the long video platform, the content attributes of more diversified short and medium-length videos also grew, the situation of this and the other aggravated the contradictions and competition between the two sides, and the short video film and television editing problem is the flashpoint of the contradiction.
The problem of short video film and television editing is only a prelude
Under the standardized development of the industry, those infringing short video clips should be swept into the recycle bin of history, but the "one-size-fits-all" provision is not advisable, and will only bring backproductive effects.
The short video editing industry is also experiencing internal rolls, after all, the number of new TV series and movies released every year is limited, and some players who can only spit hard for traffic, deliberately do not mention the advantages of film and television works and amplify the shortcomings, out of the scope of film and television reviews. The standardized development of film and television editing is the lower limit of improving the quality of industry content, rather than directly "one-size-fits-all".
Another problem that users are worried about is that the "one-size-fits-all" approach may lose the independence of some content creators, and in order to obtain free copyright options and cooperate with the copyright owners of the work, so-called film and television review videos will become a new form of TELEVISION advertising. Perhaps in order to reduce the risk of short video editing and meet the real needs of users for "streamlining" film and television dramas, Douyin and Kuaishou have turned their attention to the short drama track.
Through the cooperation between the platform and MCN and other institutions, the risk of infringement can be avoided, and the vertical screen viewing mode and the plot that does not drag are in line with the fragmented drama chasing needs of office workers. At present, there are many short dramas with more than 100 million plays on Jitter, which proves the popularity of the short drama model to a certain extent.
In the past, long content from other platforms was cut into short content, but now platform content agencies are encouraged to shoot their own cuts. Perhaps the short video platform realizes that only the editor of the downstream content cannot last long, and the development platform self-made short drama not only avoids copyright risks, but also extends the platform tentacles to the script, film and television IP development and post-production and other places where the profit is higher in the industry. In August this year, today's headlines as the producer of the mini-drama "The Remaining 11" starring Li Xian, it can be expected that in the future, short and medium-length video and long and short video platforms will also break out more fierce competition, now it is only a matter of editing, and in the future may be a high-quality script, stars and IP development teams and other all-round film and television resources competition, compared with these, film and television editing problems are too basic.
The contradiction between the short and medium video platform and the long video platform is that the former not only competes for more user use time, but also prolongs the time of the medium and short video content, which directly affects the living space of the long video platform. Only longer video times can carry more information points, which is a major way for short and medium-sized video platforms to cope with the depletion of content creation.