Tencent sues ByteDance again for copyright violation: short video vs. long video...

Tencent sues ByteDance again for copyright violation: short video vs. long video battle intensifies in China

Tencent sues ByteDance again for copyright violation: short video vs. long video battle intensifies in China

Zijing Fu

posted on December 22, 2021 11:21 pm

Tencent has filed 168 lawsuits against the TikTok owner since June, seeking more than 2.943 billion yuan in damages.

Tencent amended its claim in a copyright lawsuit against TikTok's sister app Douyin to Chongqing First Intermediate Court earlier this month, raising the claim amount from 61.6 million yuan to 800 million yuan($125 million), which is currently the highest claim amount among multiple Tencent suits against ByteDance, the owner of Douyin.

In June, Tencent demanded pre-litigation behavior preservation for Douyin videos related to “Soul Land”, an anime series exclusively broadcasted on Tencent Video, in Chongqing First Intermediate Court. Tencent argued that Douyin users uploaded “Soul Land” content to the short video platform, infringing the copyright of "Soul Land”. On such grounds, Tencent requested Douyin to delete all infringing videos and subsequently brought the case to court.

Behind Tencent’s lawsuit, the battle between short video and long video in China is getting fierce. With the rise of short-video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, Chinese netizens have gotten used to fast-paced video content. Numerous short video creators took advantage of the demand and created derivative videos of popular TV shows or movies, often re-capping a whole episode or an entire movie in a few minutes.

Such videos can attract millions of views, according to a PingWest report. In the past, creators of the original movies or TV shows did not bother to hold short video creators accountable, since such derivative works can help boost publicity and attract viewers to watch the newest episodes.

However, as the popularity of such derivative short videos has grown, the interests of long video platforms have been undermined to some extent.

The 2020 China Online Audio-Visual Development Research Report released by the China Online Audio-Visual Program Service Association shows that as of June 2020, the user scale, length of use, and usage rate of short videos have fully surpassed that of long videos, becoming the dominant pastime tool.

As of August 2020, Douyin’s daily active users(DAU) exceeded 600 million. Meanwhile, Kuaishou’s DAU exceeded 302 million in the first half of 2020, and its MAU exceeded 776 million. Around the same period, Tencent Video’s MAU reached 500 million while iQiyi’s reached 560 million.

As short video platforms’ growth threatens that of long video platforms, it became natural for long video providers such as Tencent Video to guard their turfs.

Tencent has filed 168 lawsuits against the TikTok owner since June, seeking 2.943 billion yuan in compensation. There are four cases in which the claim amount exceeds 100 million yuan, with the highest being the case of  “Soul Land”, currently standing at 800 million yuan; followed by "You are my glory”, a hit TV show featuring the story between two Ping Pong players, standing at 755 million yuan.

In April this year, Tencent and other video streaming service providers jointly issued a statement, condemning short video platforms like Douyin for distributing and enabling the publication of derivative content, infringing on copyright owners’ legal and financial interests.

The China Association of Online Audio-Visual Program Services has also released the Rules on Content Audit Standards for Short Video on the Internet (2021), which aims to address the growing problem of short videos’ copyright infringement.

Relying upon un-copyrighted content to attract views and traffic is not a sustainable way to grow, and short video platforms know that. According to iResearch statistics, from 2023 to 2025, the market size of the short video industry is expected to slow down, maintaining a 16% compound annual growth rate, 28% less than the compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2022.

Consequently, short video platforms Kuaishou and Douyin have separately rolled out pay-per-view “mini-shows”, which are mini TV series shot and edited horizontally. Each episode of the mini-shows is around 2 minutes long, and costs at least 1 yuan ($0.16) to watch.

The short-form video series on Douyin has gained significant popularity. A single episode of mini-shows can get over 1 billion views, according to a previous PingWest report. Based on the number of likes and comments of some pay-per-view mini-shows, users are willing to pay for such content. For platforms, mini-shows have the potential of becoming a stable source of revenue and a new growth point for the whole industry.