The biggest leak in Chinese film history: 8 films were pirated and circulated during the Spring Festival

With a box office of 2.444 billion yuan in 8 days, the domestic science fiction film "The Wandering Earth" has become the biggest dark horse in this year's Spring Festival. However, before the film company could enjoy the joy of both word-of-mouth and box office success, it had already spent a lot of energy on complaints and blocking pirated resources.

Not only "The Wandering Earth", the 2019 Spring Festival movie schedule has just begun. On the second day of the Lunar New Year (February 6), only one day after the movies were released, pirated resources of all eight films of the Spring Festival schedule appeared on the Internet.

The phenomenon of movie piracy has always existed, but it is rare to see the entire Spring Festival movie leaked in high definition just one day after its release. Some industry insiders even called it "the biggest leak in Chinese film history."

Second-hand trading platforms have become the hardest hit area, and the National Copyright Administration has taken action

On the first day of the Spring Festival, "The Wandering Earth" was widely circulated in WeChat Moments with its explosive reputation. In addition, "Speeding Life" and "Crazy Alien" also showed good reputation and box office. Just when everyone was praising the performance of the Chinese film market, the scene of pirated resources "flying all over the sky" appeared.

"I wish everyone a happy new year. My thoughts are all below: The Wandering Earth (TC HD Edition) and Pegasus (TC HD Edition)..." This is a phenomenon of "greeting the new year" with resources that appeared in WeChat groups and QQ groups during the Spring Festival this year.

In addition, many people posted information about pirated Spring Festival movies on online platforms, selling them at prices of "one yuan for a movie or three yuan (or five yuan) for a package."

The first to issue a statement calling for curbing this phenomenon were the filmmakers of The Wandering Earth. On the evening of February 8, the film's director Guo Fan posted on Weibo that there have been some piracy incidents on the Internet recently. If you find any or have any clues, please send us a private message and we will deal with the relevant issues in a centralized manner.

The "leakage incident" subsequently attracted the attention of the National Copyright Administration, which announced on February 10 that "in recent days, through the joint actions of multiple departments and rights holders, the spread of pirated movies in the Spring Festival cinema has been curbed to a certain extent. We will hand over serious infringers and pirates to the public security department to take criminal measures to crack down on them."

In fact, the National Copyright Administration paid attention to this matter long before the New Year. On February 2, it announced that it would list eight Spring Festival movies as the first batch of key works copyright protection warning list in 2019. It also stated that relevant network service providers should take the following protection measures for key theater movies on the copyright protection warning list:

Internet service providers that directly provide content shall not provide works on the copyright protection warning list during the film's screening period; Internet service providers that provide storage space should prohibit users from uploading works on the copyright protection warning list; Internet service providers, e-commerce websites and application stores that provide search links should speed up the processing of notifications from the rights holders of works on the copyright protection warning list to delete infringing content or disconnect infringing links.

However, the warnings from relevant departments did not attract the attention of those who disseminate pirated resources on the Internet. Pirated resources can be seen circulating and being sold on multiple online platforms, including WeChat public accounts, WeChat groups, QQ groups, Xianyu, and Baidu Cloud.

It is understood that the production team of The Wandering Earth has organized an anti-piracy team to block the links. Producer Gong Geer said that the number of online views of pirated resources of all Spring Festival films this year is conservatively estimated to be more than 20 million times. "Everyone's anti-piracy links have been reported and blocked, but due to technical reasons, some are blocked quickly, while others take some time."

At present, keywords related to "The Wandering Earth" and other Spring Festival films have been blocked on some platforms.

However, piracy is still spreading rampantly. When Sina Technology searched for "The Wandering Earth" on a second-hand sales platform, no related sales links were found, but related sales information could still be seen in some comment sections.

When searching for "liulang", it was found that related sales information could also be found. One of the related product information showed that the resources of "The Wandering Earth" could be obtained for 1.99 yuan. The seller said that the product could not be purchased directly and private transfer was required.

Sina Technology then spent 1.99 yuan to purchase the Baidu cloud disk link of "The Wandering Earth". After downloading and unzipping, you can watch the high-definition non-recorded version of the video.

Generally speaking, there are two common sources of pirated films. One is the unauthorized version, that is, when a new film is released in a theater, someone takes a video recording device and records the entire movie while the movie is being shown; the other is a clear version purchased through other channels or accidentally leaked.

This time, the Spring Festival film resources were leaked, and not only crude pirated versions were leaked, but also a large number of links to high-definition versions with interstitial advertisements.

This makes everyone suspect that it was leaked from the original file. However, currently it is sold by individuals, and some people speculate that there are loopholes in the handover and flow of film resources.

Is the high ticket price the cause?

In fact, pirated movie resources have always existed on the Internet and cannot be stopped despite repeated bans.

A netizen revealed to Sina Technology that he had watched the entire film on a certain film resource website when Wolf Warrior 2 was still in theaters, but it was pirated from the cinema. He revealed, "I watched Kong: Skull Island earlier than the cinema, and it was in high definition. The others were pirated from the cinema."

Another netizen said that he had watched the high-definition version of "Deadpool 2" from a film and television resource website after it was released in the United States but before it was released in China, but he has never seen a high-definition version of a movie currently being released in China leaked.

Judging from this year's Spring Festival period, the high-definition version leaked from theaters less than a week after its release, which was extremely unfavorable to the market environment and movie box office.

The leak of popular movie resources has given many people free choices, at least causing the loss of a large number of low-frequency moviegoers. The low price and high-definition quality are indeed very attractive to some people.

Of course, some people also said that they would not watch pirated resources even if they have the resources. Movies like "The Wandering Earth" must be experienced in the cinema to be meaningful.

Another obvious phenomenon during this year's Spring Festival is that movie tickets generally increased in price. Data shows that the average ticket price in 2019 was 45.12, an increase of 15.30% from 39.13 last year. The service fee for the film also increased by 1.05 yuan compared to last year, and the average service fee in 2019 was 2.8 yuan.

Between the 60 yuan movie ticket and the 1 yuan high-definition video, many people are tempted by the latter. This has also brought certain losses to the movie market box office.

According to statistics from the self-media Rhino Entertainment, considering the huge population base during the Spring Festival, the cumulative losses converted to box office revenue are expected to be close to 1 billion.

According to Sina Technology, as of 24:00 on February 10, the cumulative box office of this year's Spring Festival exceeded 5.8 billion yuan, an increase of 1.2% over the same period last year, setting a new record for the same period. However, the total number of moviegoers and attendance rate decreased compared with last year, with about 130 million moviegoers, a year-on-year decrease of 10.4%.

According to the survey, taking a fourth-tier city as an example, the price of movie tickets during the Spring Festival last year increased from 20-30 yuan in the past to around 40 yuan. However, this year, many people canceled their movie plans because of the 80 yuan ticket price.

Some people attribute the outflow of pirated resources to the increase in movie ticket prices. Although there is no direct connection between the two, to a certain extent, the rise in movie ticket prices has also led to the spread of pirated resources.

The Beijing News commented that with the improvement of residents' income levels and the development of the domestic film industry, the increase in ticket prices should be a normal phenomenon, but the "leek-cutting" price increase not only seriously affected people's entertainment experience during the Spring Festival, but also interfered with the normal development of the domestic film market.

As of now, the source of these pirated resources is still under investigation.

According to the relevant provisions of my country's Copyright Law, spreading download links of pirated movies on the Internet without the permission of the copyright owner (excluding reasonable use, etc.) may infringe the distribution rights and network information dissemination rights of the copyright owner of the film work, thereby incurring legal liability.

Sina Technology consulted a lawyer specializing in online copyright, who said that film copyrights belong to the copyright owner, and that the dissemination, screening, and revenue from films fall within the scope of copyright control and require authorized behavior as a prerequisite, otherwise it would constitute infringement.

Obviously, selling and disseminating pirated movie resources in any form on the Internet platform is already an infringement, and "according to the Copyright Law, the infringement can be ordered to stop the infringement, compensate for damages, etc. The specific amount of compensation may be determined based on the losses of the right holder and the income of the infringer," said the lawyer.

The above-mentioned lawyer revealed that from a legal perspective, whether the platform is responsible and how it is responsible should be judged based on the nature of the platform's behavior. "Simply put, if the platform uploads content on its own and is a content provider, it may constitute a direct actor, which constitutes direct infringement; if users upload content to the platform and the platform is only a service provider, it needs to be measured based on the safe harbor principle and the notification and deletion procedure is the premise (if it is still not handled after notification, it will enter the infringement evaluation process)."

As of press time, the product information of "The Wandering Earth" purchased on a second-hand trading platform has been deleted, showing "the product does not exist or has been deleted."

Regarding copyright issues, the National Copyright Administration also pointed out that the unauthorized dissemination of copyright protection warning key works through information networks should be investigated and dealt with strictly and promptly in accordance with the law.

Influenced by this pirated resource incident, the relevant departments may strengthen the protection of the copyright of film and television works and vigorously crack down on the spread of pirated resources. Spreading pirated resources may make money, but spreading pirated download links will violate relevant laws.