Source: Tech Planet
"I really like to watch the edited video, some up lords know very well what we want to watch, compared to the lengthy plot in the TV series, the re-creation content of the up masters is concise, the dubbing is appropriate, and the next meal is necessary."
Double speed viewing, only watch a certain actor cut, in the era of mobile Internet, young people are increasingly unable to tolerate the protracted and lengthy water injection plot, and short video drama chasing has become a new cultural consumption phenomenon. However, on December 15, 2021, the rules known as the "strongest copyright review in history" were released, and short video dramas may face more challenges.
Article 93 of the Detailed Rules for the Standard Review of Online Short Video Content (2021) issued by the China Online Audiovisual Program Service Association stipulates that "all kinds of audiovisual programs and clips such as films, TELEVISION dramas, online film and television dramas are cut and adapted without authorization". That is, short videos must not be edited without authorization.
Film and television drama editing content is an important part of the content ecology of short video platforms. If the new version of the detailed rules is strictly implemented, a large number of creators who rely on film and television editing on short video platforms will face the "disaster of extinction", and film and television editing works with secondary creative attributes may also be seriously affected. Many users who like erchuang express regret that in their view, some secondary creation works belong to artistic creation, and it is a pity to be blocked or even removed from the shelves.
Copyright compliance is imperative, but under the issue of copyright authorization, are the specific and practical issues equally worthy of attention?
According to China Fund News, Zhang Ping, executive vice president of the School of Intellectual Property of Peking University, previously expressed the view that the account producers and operators of some short video platforms have arbitrarily edited, cut, transported, and disseminated film and television works without authorization, harming the interests of copyright owners. But he also pointed out that while protecting film and television copyrights, it is also necessary to leave space for secondary creation, in the Internet age or information age, everyone is an author, everyone is a user, if you all follow one-on-one accurate authorization is unlikely.
Many film and television drama editing bloggers have reported that the number of individual bloggers, film and television companies, and film and television works is large, and the authorization mechanism, price, etc. are not transparent, and it is difficult to obtain full authorization.
Film and television editing does not naturally stand on the opposite side of the original film, and sometimes it can actually play a role in feeding back the original. Many users are curious about the original work because of the film and television editing content, and then convert to the original user.
When new content consumption habits are formed, new content supply appears, and film and television copyright problems occur, is there another possibility of copyright compliance, so that there is no copyright infringement in the world? Can the overseas Youtube copyright management model be used as a reference?
The dilemma of maximizing the benefits of video content
Searching for "film and television editing" as a keyword on the short video platform can search for hundreds of creators who make a living by editing film and television dramas, many of whom have creators and fans in the tens of millions. The emergence of these creators, on the one hand, is for the purpose of commercial profit, on the other hand, it is because of solving the problem of hydration of long video content and meeting the content consumption needs of young users.
Typical is the "poisonous tongue movie" with 61 million fans on Douyin, which provides users with exclusive interpretation, classic analysis and many other interesting content as a head account, and is often selected as the publicity position of cinema movies. With the influence of the industry, Poison Tongue Film solved the film and television copyright problem earlier, and formed a win-win situation between content publishers and original film distribution channels.
However, not all film and television edits can be successfully licensed. Many entrepreneurs do have the problem of indifferent copyright concepts.
In many cases, the copyright authorization mechanism and the authorization price are not transparent, and it is difficult to obtain a complete authorization.
Many creators have a certain degree of copyright consciousness and will obtain the authorization of the copyright owner in advance before editing film and television dramas. However, the pain point faced by this part of the industry is that even if they consciously obtain the authorization of the copyright owner, they sometimes suffer from the embarrassing situation of not being able to contact the copyright owner or the sky-high royalties.
On the one hand, it is impossible to seek copyright, and on the other hand, there is no way to complain about infringement.
Qiu Qihu, general manager of film and television production company Rabbit Culture, told Tech Planet that they have been overwhelmed by the infringement. "I really encountered a lot of infringement and no way to complain, so I arranged a team of three people to defend my rights, but the results were minimal."
In Qiu Qihu's view, whether erchuang is an infringement also needs to be defined. If what the creator of the second creation does is to cut the strip and move, there is no so-called second creation, then without authorization, it is naked infringement. For those short video platform creators who do not maliciously move clips, the other party sends a request for authorization email, and they will generally authorize.
Another film and television copyright industry insider told Tech Planet that they welcome short video content that edits film and television drama flowers, promotional videos, and tidbits, and also needs such works to help reach more users. As for the act of involving spoilers, breaking up the entire movie and TV series into N fragments to spread, they firmly resisted.
In fact, the traffic dividend beneficiary platform is also actively solving the copyright problems exposed in the development. At the "2021 China Internet Copyright Protection and Development Conference" forum, Zhang Fuping, vice president and editor-in-chief of Beijing ByteDance, said that video platforms such as Douyin and Watermelon under ByteDance have always paid attention to the reasonable and compliant use of copyright and strive to support originality. On the one hand, the platform has purchased a large number of copyrights for the original authors to use; on the other hand, the platform has launched the Original Creator Alliance program, which solves the problem of their difficult rights protection.
In the past two years, copyright disputes in the film and television industry have occurred frequently, and in the process of the rise of film and television editing groups, they have encountered a narrow road with copyright compliance issues. The industry desperately needs a copyright solution that can achieve a win-win situation.
The copyright dilemma requires new solutions
Film and television variety show content largely belongs to the traffic responsibility of the platform.
One of the content types with large traffic on Douyin is film and television, and the "Douyin User Portrait Report" previously released by "Huge Arithmetic" in 2020 shows that film and television content has become the fourth most preferred video type of Douyin users after interpretation, life and food content.
Film and television editing content not only enriches the content ecology of the short video platform, but also provides a steady stream of traffic to the platform. Video content creators are also happy to see it, after all, there is a lot of long-tail content in the video field, which requires different forms and secondary dissemination of different carriers to maximize benefits.
But this is more of an idealized solution, and industry insiders believe that the copyright of the content of the PGC model is mostly concentrated in the hands of platforms that buy out the exclusive broadcast rights. Copyright multi-platform sharing, many platforms lack the motivation to share, in addition to the lack of technical support means to support multi-platform sharing, the biggest dilemma is the lack of third-party video copyright management platform in China.
Some people familiar with the overseas video content industry mentioned that learning from YouTube to introduce Content ID and copyright management system, blocking infringing content in advance through the corresponding anti-piracy technology, or paying revenue share to the copyright owner, minimizing the loss of the copyright owner before and after the event, has been verified overseas is a feasible way.
However, the high cost of purchasing content on the long video platform itself will also propose "sky-high" copyright fees when re-authorizing the relevant platforms, and even some copyrights will not be sold directly. The copyright siege dilemma that had previously appeared in the field of music was happening again in the field of video.
The above-mentioned people familiar with the overseas model said that the YouTube model is currently difficult to implement in China for many reasons. One of the biggest problems is that one of the premises for the YouTube model to take effect is that copyright provides the platform with video media (that is, original films) to help the platform achieve copyright filtering. But the real problem is that at present, domestic long video platforms are reluctant to provide short video platforms.
In addition, the domestic copyright issue is very different from the situation faced by YouTube. All YouTube needs to address is the copyright owner's anti-piracy claims. Copyright owners are not unwilling to have relevant videos exist and spread on YouTube, on the contrary, when they can share benefits with creators, they are willing to allow creators to help spread in multiple dimensions.
According to a relevant research report by the US Copyright Office, on YouTube, after the copyright owner finds that the video is suspected of infringement, it can choose to block the video, or choose to retain the video and monetize the ad. In the past five years, copyright owners have received $2 billion in revenue from choosing to retain videos, and many copyright owners (especially music copyright owners) have praised the system, saying that licensed video reservations have opened up new revenues for the video content industry.
In contrast, in China, unlike copyright holders, long video platforms hold the online copyright of some popular film and television dramas and variety shows, and the main appeal is not to expand dissemination and share, but to gain a competitive advantage by virtue of exclusive copyright.
Copyright owners are more concerned about the distribution of benefits, but at present, copyright has become a competitive weapon for platforms. Judging from the hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed by long video platforms against short video film and television copyrights this year, the main demand of long video platforms is to require the deletion, blocking, and interception of related videos, rather than allowing retention of videos to get a share.
From the perspective of competition, long and short video platforms sometimes fight for their own battles and build competitive barriers due to the strategic needs of exclusive content. Most of the popular film and television drama copyrights in the market are in the hands of long videos, and the platform can blackmail copyrights to order the princes. Although the demand of long video platforms to protect copyright from infringement is justified, it is difficult to achieve a win-win situation in the competitive landscape of zero-sum games.
Is there a better solution to the copyright problem than to block it? Does adding an option reduce infringement by one?
From the video copyright war, to the win-win situation for all parties
Behind the copyright dispute is actually a protracted traffic dispute between long and short video platforms.
At the 2021 online audio-visual conference, the executives of the three parent video platforms of "Aiyouteng" invariably complained about the "crusade" of short videos, and the competition between long and short videos was fully open, causing industry concern.
In the past two years, the industry's condemnation of short video infringement has been common. The rise of short video platforms has invisibly squeezed the living space of long video platforms, and user time and user habits have begun to tilt towards short video platforms. For long video platforms that are facing profitability problems, the sharing of short videos can be described as worse. Long after long, long and short videos have long been undeclared war.
"Copyright", especially exclusive copyright, has long been regarded as a moat for long video platforms, a key weapon against competitors. However, the success of the copyright, the loss of the copyright, the struggle for exclusive copyright of the money war, so that the long video paid a huge price, perennial deep loss quagmire.
Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Tencent and CEO of Penguin Pictures, once said that the content cost invested by Tencent Video in the past three years has exceeded 50 billion yuan, and it will still invest more than 100 billion yuan in the next three years. According to iQIYI's financial report data, the content cost from 2018 to 2020 was 21.1 billion yuan, 22.2 billion yuan and 20.9 billion yuan, respectively.
For long video platforms, copyright builds a wall for their exclusive content ecology, but also lays huge hidden dangers, and the cost of copyright remains high all year round. Essentially, long-form video platforms also need to share the cost of copyright.
For the entire film and television industry, in the context of the implementation of the Anti-Monopoly Law and the fact that music platforms are not allowed to sign exclusive copyright agreements, is it time to discuss another way to solve the problem, which can maximize copyright interests and win-win results for all parties? With YouTube's introduction of Content ID and copyright management system models, should the industry put it on the table and discuss ways to break the game?
Among them, the most at stake is the copyright holder of the video content, and maximizing the copyright benefit may also be their current priority.
A film and television production company producer told Tech Planet that unauthorized film and television clips on short video platforms are pirated infringements, and they have specialized personnel in charge of monitoring and combating piracy.
The producer believes that this is an era when copyright is becoming more and more valuable, long video platforms have previously paid high fees for copyright, and short video platform copyright investment is relatively not so much. If the short video platform buys the copyright from them, they are willing to authorize it.
For the sake of user pulling new users and members pulling new considerations, the video platform will require the copyright owner to simulcast on up to 2-3 platforms to consolidate the content advantages on its own platform. As copyright holders, from the perspective of risk considerations, they prefer multi-platform simulcasting, because multi-platform simulcast revenue is sometimes more secure than exclusive revenue.
Exclusive copyright can be a moat for the platform, but it can also be the biggest constraint. There is no exclusive copyright contract, which is actually a good thing for all parties, because the overall cost of copyright can be reduced.
"There are no eternal friends between video sites, no eternal enemies, only eternal interests. After the premiere of a drama, it can be distributed between Aiyouteng and generate more revenue. Short and long-form video platforms should also distribute to maximize revenue," says the producer.
In the future, the purchase of long videos for the premiere and the playback of the whole drama, and the purchase and adaptation rights of short videos for the diversion of the whole drama, may be a more ideal multi-win model.