A few days ago, the Beijing Internet Court made a final judgment on the boiling iQiyi projection restriction case in 2023: the plaintiff enjoys the rights and interests of 720P and 1080P HD projection before July 15, 2025, and the iQiyi platform compensates the plaintiff for 41 days of gold VIP membership time.
As the plaintiff, @lawpig said on his personal Weibo: I have no opinion on the judgment of the first instance to compensate for 41 days, but I hope that iQIYI can treat all damaged members equally, and wait for iQIYI's announcement! In addition, the plaintiff also said that iQIYI could compensate all VIP members who were affected during this period.
It is reported that the cause of this incident is that iQiyi was discovered by netizens at the beginning of 2023VIP users can only enjoy 480p projection quality with the highest definition. In addition, when the user uses the iPad to connect to the TV through HDMI, the content that could have been played normally on the mobile terminal is banned after connecting to the TV with "due to copyright reasons, this content does not support HDMI connection playback", which means that the user can only "enjoy" the 480p definition in the projection, and even the rights of external devices are also deprived. If you want to watch iQiyi on TV, there is only one way out.
In this regard, iQiyi said that the restriction of HDMI connection playback function is at the request of the copyright owner, based on the digital rights protection agreement, in order to prevent screen recording piracy. This feature has been online for many years, and it is also a common practice in the industry. Other content that is not subject to the Digital Rights Protection Agreement can still be played through the HDMI connection. This restriction is independent of whether you are a patron or not.
But netizens did not agree with this response, so iQIYI changed the projection agreement on February 20, 2023: for iQIYI gold VIP members who are still in subscription status on February 20, 2023, resume 720P and 1080P resolution projection services: members of a single month/season/annual card can use it until the end of this order; Consecutive monthly/quarterly/yearly members can continue to use it if they continue to subscribe in the future.
It is believed that this judgment will also further rectify the membership agreement, screen projection, and peripheral link agreements of Internet video platforms, so as to provide consumers with a more high-quality content platform.