"Celebrating More Than Years", "Langya Bang", "Ghost Blowing the Lamp", "Notes on Tomb Robbery", ...... The copyrights of these popular novels belong to China Literature Group, but they have appeared on more than 10 pirated novel apps. It's all the work of a criminal gang that runs a pirated novel app. The gang was involved in more than 3,000 infringing and pirated novels, and its monthly revenue and advertising traffic were divided into more than 300 yuan. A few years ago, after the Shanghai Minhang District People's Procuratorate initiated a public prosecution, Du XX, Xu XX, and Tian XX of the gang were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from one year and 10 months to three years, and each was fined between 200,000 and 4,200,000 yuan;
Illegally used the copyrights of more than 3,000 novels for traffic monetization
At the end of 2020, Du Moumou, who had been at home for many years, met Liu in the stock speculation group (handled in a separate case). In Du Moumou's view, Liu is a successful person who usually does some investment business. After the two chatted for a while, Liu said that he had some comics, novel websites, and APP resources in his hands, "These websites or APPs themselves bring a lot of traffic, and if they can be realized, they will definitely make a lot of money." ”
Seeing that this business could make money and there were big names to guide him, Du Moumou soon agreed to assist him in operating nearly 20 popular pirated novel apps on the market. Under Liu's instructions, Du Moumou first teamed up with his classmate Xu Moumou to use the documents received from Liu to register software copyrights for novel and comic reading apps, and instructed Xu Moumou to register more than 100 companies on behalf of him, register domain names for the above-mentioned apps, and open and recharge Baidu cloud sub-accounts to promote and drain traffic.
In order to maximize the realization of APP traffic, Du Moumou and Xu Moumou used these registered companies to sign agreements with multiple APP advertising marketing and monetization platforms to receive advertisements, and implanted advertisements into these reading APPs. When someone uses these apps to watch novels and comics, they will see the implanted ads, and then they will get traffic revenue.
If there is money coming in, someone needs to take care of the accounts. Du Moumou also found his friend Tian Moumou, who worked in the banking system, and asked him to give full play to his financial expertise to keep monthly accounts and check advertising profit bills on his behalf. After the monthly income arrives, Tian Moumou makes a table of the advertising revenue of different companies under his name, sets up the function of "burning after reading", and sends it to the chat group of specific software. After summarizing and sorting out the table of these earnings, Du Moumou will send the documents to Liu, and then transfer part of the money to different accounts according to Liu's instructions. The rest of the money is divided proportionally among the three of them.
Lust for profit, he still did not stop after being filed a civil lawsuit
At the beginning of 2022, a civil lawsuit from the court sounded the alarm for the trio's path to making money. According to this lawsuit, the novels on these apps are pirated and infringe on the copyrights of others, and civil compensation is required. Although the three had discussed it together, they didn't take it to heart.
After that, Du Moumou and the three continued to participate in the operation even though they knew that the works disseminated on the above-mentioned APP were suspected of infringing the copyrights of others many times, during which more than 3,000 novels were disseminated to the public through the Internet without the permission of the copyright owner.
But the "good times" did not last long. At the end of 2022, the police received a tip: books such as "Celebrating More Than Years", "Langya Bang" and "Ghost Blowing the Lantern" whose copyrights belong to China Literature Group appeared on a novel reading app. A criminal gang specializing in operating multiple pirated novel reading apps immediately surfaced.
After investigation, the defendant Du XX successively collaborated with Xu XX and Tian XX to participate in registration management and actual control of a number of companies at the instigation of others, which were used to apply for the filing and registration of mobile novel APP software and online domain names, and signed a cooperation agreement with a third-party online promotion platform to undertake traffic advertisements for profit for the above-mentioned APP. The average monthly advertising traffic income of the three defendants involved in the operation of multiple APPs was more than 3 million yuan>
The healthy and orderly development of the online literature industry brooks no destruction
There are many links involved in the case, the flow of funds is large, and the identification of works is difficult...... In the face of these difficulties, the Minhang District Procuratorate intervened in advance and guided the collection of evidence on the spot as soon as possible, froze more than 300 yuan of relevant account funds in a timely manner, seized more than 100 illegal APP companies, and effectively cracked down on the copyright infringement criminal industry chain in multiple links such as company registration, operation and promotion, and identified the number of infringing works involved in the case through two identity appraisals and judicial audits, and consolidated the relevant evidence of the case.
On October 7, 2023, the Minhang District Procuratorate indicted the defendants Du XX, Xu XX, and Tian XX. On December 15 of the same year, the case of suspected copyright infringement by Du, Tian and Xu was tried in open court in the Shanghai Minhang District People's Court.
During the trial, the prosecutor presented evidence, cross-examined evidence, and debated in court to prove the criminal facts and subjective knowledge of the three defendants who copied and distributed other people's works without the permission of the copyright owner for the purpose of seeking advertising traffic revenue. The defender has no objection to the charges and facts charged by the public prosecution. In this case, a Shanghai technology company under China Literature Group, the owner of the intellectual property rights in this case, appointed a litigation lawyer to appear in court to express his opinions. During the debate session, the prosecution and defense fully expressed their opinions on the methods of determining the defendant's criminal proceeds, the identification of principal and accessory offenders, and whether to apply a suspended sentence to the defendant.
In view of the fact that the three defendants all voluntarily pleaded guilty and accepted punishment, and Xu's family withdrew the illegal gains on their behalf, and Tian's family paid the fine in advance on their behalf, recently, the court finally adopted the procuratorate's accusations and sentencing recommendations, and the defendants Du Moumou, Xu Moumou, and Tian Moumou committed the crime of copyright infringement and were finally sentenced to the above punishments.