Piracy on the Web

Disney has been having some problems with bootlegged copies of Pixar’s animated feature, “Wall-E,” on a Chinese YouTube like website, 56.com. “Wall-E” was only recently released on DVD, but has been appearing on 56.com since the beginning of November. Ironically, 56.com has investors from Steamboat Ventures, a subset of Disney. This isn’t the only newly released full length feature to end up on the Chinese site; movies like “Horton Hears a Who,” “Iron Man,” and “Kung Fu Panda” have also been uploaded. It’s evident that the Chinese piracy laws are in no way enforced since sites like Youku.com and Baidu.com are also putting up copy written material, with no real consequences.

Chinese piracy accounts for $512 billion worldwide and it’s been a constant effort to protect copyrights in all industries. The pirated goods rob industries of billions of dollars each year through worldwide sales. The new use of 56.com to put up full length features of its investors is just the newest way the film industry is losing out. The protection of intellectual property is supposedly the concern of everyone involved with the sites, but the continual promises of better strives against piracy has so far resulted in nothing more than the mere words.

Representatives from the websites claim to be introducing new antipiracy software to check and remove any copy written material. But besides being new and not fully functioning, the amount of material put up daily on sites like 56.com will absolutely compromise the effective use of the site. 56.com has invested in a new program from Vobile Inc. The program is meant to scan all material and stop any material with a copyright from being uploaded. While efficient in newly added videos, the program encounters serious complications in all the videos that are already on the site. It is a massive undertaking to go through the billions of videos posted that almost needs to be manually managed. Vobile also happens to be another company invested in by Steamboat. It’s apparent that Steamboat is more interested in promoting its investments than actually attacking and rectifying the piracy issue at hand.

Steamboat executives have expressed the chance of shutting down 56.com until any copy written videos could be removed. But because the about 180 million people in China watch online videos, the idea was quickly rejected. Steamboat as well as other investors felt it was more important to have a presence in the market while simultaneously helping to alleviate the piracy boom rather than completely shutting down the sites. Steamboat should mainly be concerned with the lax piracy policy of 56.com, a user is asked to take down any pirated material within 24 hours of being notified. The policy seems more of an empty threat and puts more control in the users’ hands than Steamboat and Disney probably like.

Article Location:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122722555475645951.html

Addition Sources:
http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=827825