(Chinese Version)

　　Zhong Weijie, chief producer of Jiemian News’ short video subsidiary Jianchang Video, should be quite excited to obtain the first copyright register certificate for short video we media in China. After all, it was still suffering from copyright violation a month ago.

　　This is actually a very special case. According to Jiemian News’ statement, Freezing Point (Bingdian), a weekly supplement to the newspaper China Youth Daily, partially adapted Jianchang Video’s short video “Japanese Living in Nanjing” into its feature report “Japanese in Nanjing”. However, it took Jianchang Video to gather necessary information and make the video. After rounds of negotiation, they settled the conflict through written apology.

　　Had Jianchang received the certificate earlier, this incident might have ended in a completely different way.

　　“Carriers” and ”scissors” abound in the Chinese short video market

　　Short video has become one of the most popular concepts in China’s content innovation sector recently. Since it is more intuitive and expressive way to convey information, short video has increasingly become one the mainstream ways of expression in the Chinese social media, news and information market.

　　Statistics suggest that the number of active users of short video service has kept rising rapidly since 2015. As of December 2016, there was already over 50 million active users in the Chinese short video market. Zhang Jianfeng, senior vice president of Yixia Technology, revealed that the total view times of all its platforms’ short videos increased by 740 per cent year-on-year.

　　The burgeoning development of the short video market can also be told from capital investors’ keen interest in the sector. It is reported that there were over thirty merger & acquisition cases in 2016, the total financing volume of all types of short video projects reached RMB 5.37 billion. Some of the well-known investment firms include: Sequoia Capital, Zhen Fund and Matrix Partners, etc.

　　However, the Chinese short video market seems to be developing in an unrestricted manner. In previous reports, we’ve pointed out that an innumerable number of “carriers” and “scissors” that are brazenly copying others’ contents have emerged on platforms such as Sian Weibo, WeChat and TouTiao. Although they help promote short videos to some degree, they’ve never cared about matters such as copyright and copyright statement.

　　Zhong Weijie and his Jianchang Video is one of the victims of such “carriers”.According to Zhong, some of the most prevalent “copyright infringement” behaviors include: cutting the opening and closing parts, downloading, using and circulating others’ contents without permission, etc. For original content producers, the potential benefit is one thing, but proper respect towards their work is more important.

　　Not only Jianchang Video but also other high-quality PGC-based short video producers, including YiTiao, ErGeng, etc., have to face copyright infringement. A survey suggests that over 94.94 per cent of people are willing to put in time and energy to participate in copyright protection. However, original content producers’ capacity is too limited against copyright infringement.

　　Many PGC-based short video producers have already put copyright protection on the agenda

　　Wen Jin, founder of short video platform MF+, and Zou Jianhua, party secretary and vice director of China Copyright Protection Center, together announced during the First China Audio and Video Contents Copyright Protection Summit held on the last day of February that Jianchang Video had received the first copyright register certificate in China.

　　With the certificate, Jianchang will have a unique DCI code for each new original video it uploads and can trace the video no matter how it is edited, cut or adapted and how much time goes by.

　　Not only short videos, but also the innovation, screenplay, background music and actors/actresses behind it are protected under the DCI framework.

　　According to Zhang Jiandong, head of Digital Copyright Level Dept. of China Copyright Protection Center, the internet not only creates the information era, but also makes copyright infringement possible. In response, China Copyright Protection Center has established an entire system of infrastructure to protect the legitimate interests of audio and video content producers.

　　MF+ also became the first third-party platform that’s qualified to register copyrights and provide copyright, distribution and legal service for audio and video content producers in China.

　　Wen Jin, CEO of MF+, believed that the producing and using scenarios of videos will become increasingly diverse in the future. Only by building a standard rule for the market and letting contents enter the market with their copyrights well-protected can the Chinese short video market grow in a healthy manner, thrive and create more market values.