Some time ago, someone posted such a screenshot on the Internet, saying that the novel software he used "read the ID card photos saved in the mobile phone album, called the front camera to take a user photo and registered a small loan with this information." In the end, it was the active interception of the National Anti-Fraud Center that saved the money, and the user eventually uninstalled the software called "Pen Fun Pavilion".
Although the authenticity of the matter cannot be verified, when Xiao Lei posted this picture to the group, the focus of the colleagues' discussion was biased: no one cared about the "victim" who was almost lost, but instead focused on the software "Pen Fun Pavilion". Using Pen Fun Court to search in the built-in mobile app stores or web pages of different brands, we can search for more than twenty different Pen Fun Court.
So the question is, who is the real Pen Fun Pavilion?
Who is Pen Fun Court, I don't care?
The question of who is Pen Fun Is a bit difficult to explain. But to say who Pen Fun Court is, this question is well explained. Biqu Ge is one of the earliest pirated online novel reading platforms in China, relying on its pirated works to read for free to attract a large number of users. According to industry surveys, the loss caused by online literature piracy in 2018 was as high as 6 billion yuan, which was 72,600 times the per capita annual wage of urban non-private units that year.
The protagonist of this article, Pen Fun Pavilion, is one of the pirated novel websites that infringe on the rights and interests of authors, and "free" is only a cover for covering up illegal facts. Li Moumou, the operator of the Pen Qui Ge website, and Liu Moumou, the technical support, made hundreds of thousands of yuan in the form of an advertising alliance. In 2019, after the report of the Reading Group, a number of pirate websites such as Pen Fun Pavilion were shut down, and Li X and Liu X were also sentenced to three years of suspended imprisonment for four years, and a fixed-term imprisonment of one year and two years of probation, respectively, with a total fine of 180,000 yuan.
Although the original Pen Fun Pavilion has been officially shut down after the verdict took effect, the demand for readers to watch pirated novels for free has always existed. Therefore, after Biqu Ge was empowered, a number of pirated novel websites that escaped legal sanctions have promoted their own websites under the name of Bi Qu Ge, thereby attracting the attention of readers and thus earning advertising or other forms of economic benefits. For example, after the closure of Biqu Ge in 2019, there are still hundreds of pirated novel reading websites named Bi Qu Ge on the Internet. Because of its repeated seals, the online literature industry also has the name of "undead pen fun cabinet".
Of course, these websites under the name of Pen Fun Pavilion may really have websites created by the "original class" of Pen Fun Pavilion, but from the performance and experience of these websites, whether these "Pen Fun Pavilion" are true or false actually does not matter at all, and the gap between them is only the more and less advertising. In other words, the so-called Pen Fun Cabinet in the App Store or App Store is not the original Pen Fun Cabinet. It's just that the original Pen Fun Pavilion has been shut down, so those Pen Fun Pavilions in the app store are also Pen Fun Pavilions from the concept of piracy.
From this point of view, as a pirated novel, the final ending of Pen Fun Pavilion is actually pirated by other websites, which can also be regarded as the completion of the cycle of piracy.
The environment for pirated novels
But then again, why are these pirate sites "wildfires burning"? That's right, it's all about money.
The reason why pirated novels are difficult to eradicate can be roughly divided into two major reasons: market demand and the difficulty of cracking down.
The first is the market demand, that is, the demand for pirated novels. Whether at home or abroad, "free" is always the biggest sign of pirated resources. Some people may blame the proliferation of piracy on "the Chinese people have no copyright awareness", but judging from the gun movies with Korean subtitles on the Internet or the pirated games with Russian file names, piracy is not a "specialty" of the mainland. Even in the United States and the United Kingdom, where the so-called copyright protection laws are sound, all kinds of pirated streaming services are emerging in an endless stream, and they are unwilling to spend money on virtual content, which can be said to be the "consensus" of the whole world.
According to the 2020 financial report released by Reading Group in early 2021, the company's revenue in 2020 was 8.53 billion yuan and gross profit was 4.23 billion yuan, an increase of 15% year-on-year. Among them, there are 10.2 million monthly paid users, and the payment rate is stable at 4.5%. In 2019, this figure was also 4.5%. In other words, although there are 400,000 more paid users than last year, more than 95% of the users of Reading Articles every year, that is, more than 200 million users choose "white prostitution" novels.
As for the difficulty of combating piracy, in the final analysis, it is also a matter of money. To evade regulation, the vast majority of pirated fiction sites set up servers overseas. For brands, the cost of overseas forensics is too high, and the time required to protect rights is too long. If the pirate platform does not cause too much economic loss to the copyright owner, "taking the initiative" in law is a more uneconomical option. Instead of strangling piracy in swaddling, it is better to wait for pirate websites to grow and develop and then fight them all over, which is why the protection of rights against piracy usually "fattens" and then deals with it.
Should the App Store be in charge?
The topic returns to The Pen Qu Ge, although the Bi Qu Ge Ben Zun was dealt with by the court in 2019, but to this day, we can still see more than a dozen "avatars" of Bi Qu Ge on the App Store. It should be known that the strict review of the App Store has always been the "selling point" that Apple is talking about, and theoretically, this kind of "dirty rebirth" Pen Fun Ge App cannot be listed on the App Store at all. But in reality, even Apple's App Store can be harassed by copycat apps.
Some people may think that Pen Fun Ge does not have its own app, these cottage applications are actually harmless, Apple does not need to purge. However, the example of Wordle some time ago proved that Apple did not think so. Some time ago, the scrabble word game Wordle became popular on Twitter, and Wordle can also be seen on the app store and Play Store leaderboards. But the problem is, Wordle is a web game that has neither ads nor a local client. In other words, the so-called Worlde on the App Store that needs to spend money to subscribe to is actually a pirated copycat application.
But the ending of these "Wordle-like" is not as good as pen fun, in Apple's crackdown on cottage applications, Apple for the first time on this "no App" website platform, removed a series of Wordle-based cottage games, to a certain extent to maintain the authority of the App Store. But in front of the Pen Fun Pavilion, this kind of "authority" seems to be a bit of a joke.
It should be known that Apple's strict management of the App Store has always been the main reason why Apple does not open third-party payment channels, and the example of Pen Fun Ge just proves that Apple "takes money and does not do things", and should open up the third-party payment ecology. But now Apple is still stalling in various ways, not opening up third-party payment channels.
For Apple, "selective enforcement" may only be for the sake of its own brand reputation. But for consumers, the "Pen Fun Pavilion" on the App Store will only further cause users to resent. When user aversion has formed enough power, the App Store's support for third-party payment channels will also become a foregone conclusion.