These inferior operations of "Youaiteng" may make pirated websites win

[TechWeb] As the summer vacation approaches, the drama market becomes more and more lively. Hot dramas such as "Celebrating the Second Anniversary", "Between Dark Clouds" and "The Story of Roses" have been launched one after another, with their popularity values breaking 10000 and their ratings hitting new highs. The video platform started "fancy income generation" with great effort, trying to catch this wealth.

As a result, the members can't jump ads, open VIP and open SVIP, close to the end of the call, advance on-demand and other operations have come. It seems that the video platform has earned more, but the user experience of watching dramas has been greatly reduced. Some netizens swore that the video platform was ugly, while quietly turning to pirated websites.

According to the small editor's search, the current piracy has evolved to the point where it can compete with the legitimate version. The pirated resources can be found within 5 minutes after the hot drama is launched, and the distribution channels are also evolving. It is crazy to see the promotion of websites, APPs, e-commerce platforms, live broadcast rooms, etc.

However, in the face of such crazy hot movie piracy, video websites can do very little. Do they really make money in the long run?

Too many users turn to piracy

Users choose piracy for a variety of reasons. According to netizens' feedback, first of all, the subscription fees of members and the viewing experience brought by too many advertisements are poor. This can also be seen from the hot microblog search in the past month.

On the evening of May 16, "Celebrating the Second Anniversary" premiered. After its launch, many netizens complained that there were too many advertisements in the play, which was simply "five steps, one advertisement, ten steps, one pile of advertisements". The writer @ Qian Wusichun couldn't help but send a message, "There are so many advertisements ahead of the celebration of more than two years that the distinguished Aurora members can't skip." Then, "Qian Wusichun complains about more than two advertisements in the celebration of more than two years" hit the microblog search. As of press release, the topic has reached 150 million readers.

According to the statistics of the Douban Turnip Go Away Group, there are 286 advertisements in 36 episodes of "Celebrating the Second Anniversary", with 7.94 advertisements per episode and 117.86s per episode. In addition, according to the aggregated data, nearly 40% of the audience are negative about the advertisement of Celebrating the Second Anniversary. Even if you buy a VIP, there are still many advertisements. If you want to watch one more episode, VIP users will have to make up the difference and open an SVIP. "SVIP is designated as a VIP doll for the rest of the year" also immediately hit the hot search.

In addition, the early locking of V in Qingyu Nian 2 also caused heated discussion. Generally speaking, the popular episodes are not updated until there are 7 or 9 episodes left for non VIP updates, and they need to open members to continue watching. However, the last 11 episodes of "Celebrating the Second Anniversary" are locked directly, which is more than other episodes. In addition, some netizens feel that "even a fat sheep has never seen such a fierce collection".

Not only Tencent Video, but Youku also has the same operation. We should watch one episode of Ink Rain and Cloud in advance, and we also need to open VIP and SVIP again. What's more, as the play nears the end, Youku will not make more changes, instead, it will make more changes, causing many netizens to complain and scold it for its "ugly appearance". Youku did not give the reason for the change, but the audience's rhythm of watching the play was suddenly disrupted, and they left a message saying "The drama is not good in the rain".  

In contrast, the popularity of "Fox Demon Little Bridesmaid on the Red Chapter" is far less than that of "Celebrating More Years 2" and "Between Ink Clouds", and the popularity of iQIYI's super big ending is not even more than 8000. On the contrary, the offline tickets of the second wheat field concert held by the variety show "Farming Bar" were free, but the mode of online live broadcast charge (VIP charge 12 yuan, non VIP charge 24 yuan) caused controversy. Many member users cannot accept the fact that they have to pay to watch after charging VIP.

Secondly, video platforms are independent, and users need to subscribe to multiple platforms to watch all the content, which also directly leads to the increase of piracy activities.

Recently, there have been several dramas with high degree of topic. "Celebrating the Second Anniversary", "The Story of the Rose" were independently broadcast by Tencent Video, "Between Ink and Clouds" and "Youku" were independently broadcast by iQiyi. To watch all the dramas, you need to open three platforms for members. Some netizens said that if there is no good content to receive files, buying a membership card would be a loss. After the end of "Celebrating the Second Anniversary", there were many cases of selling Tencent video membership cards back to the secondary e-commerce platform. Some netizens simply choose pirated websites to watch.

One yuan to watch the whole hot drama pirated websites win

The current film and television piracy, regardless of speed or scale, is far beyond imagination.

Last weekend, "Ink Rain and Clouds" had its on-demand finale ahead of schedule. Just five minutes after its launch, its pirated resources have been sold on several platforms. One yuan can see the full episode plus the high-definition resources outside of Fanwai. It costs 24 yuan to unlock the last four episodes of the legitimate version in advance. On some pirated websites, you can even see the complete set of resources of the play for free.

Not only "Between Ink Rain and Cloud" was "stolen" just after its launch, but my editor found that the recently popular "Story of Roses", "The Little Red Lady of the Fox Demon", "Celebrating the Second Anniversary", "The Story of Yan Xin" and so on have become hot resources on the platform. "Celebrating the Second Anniversary" was even sold illegally before it was broadcast.

Piracy and genuine "speed" can be described as crazy. The way of sale is also more flexible, almost surviving in every corner of the Internet. For example, the above mentioned online disk resources are sold on second-hand platforms in the form of single payment, and these episodes can be bought for one or two pieces, including "package completion", "real-time update", and "delivery every second".

On the short video platform, someone broadcast the website selling pirated resources live. These live broadcasting rooms usually use low prices and popular drama resources as gimmicks to guide users to focus on the anchor, light up the fan group, pay 1 yuan to join the group, and provide the download website of pirated websites in the group.

In addition, on second-hand platforms, there are also people who sell pirated resource APPs. They can pay 13.99 yuan to watch the movie and television VIP content of various platforms, including theater movies, hot shows, short plays, etc. They support Android Apple tablets, mobile phones, computers, and TV logins, and claim that they can be used permanently.

Piracy came into being with the birth of film and television. From video tapes, VCDs, DVDs to online disks, websites, and APPs, the technology and form have been iterated several times, and a mature industrial chain has already been formed. From production to distribution, the cost is getting lower and lower, but the income is high.

According to public reports, in about 10 minutes, a prototype of a pirated website can be built successfully, and many supporting technologies in the site can be generated almost with one click. Depending on the revenue from advertising or membership fees, outstanding pirated websites can earn tens of millions of yuan every year. Recently, a case reported by CCTV's Today Report showed that a post-90s programmer made more than 7 million yuan in less than a year by developing illegal video handling software.

According to the report of Digital TV Research, the loss of piracy to domestic streaming media will be close to 64.6 billion yuan in 2022, which will be 28 billion yuan in 2016, more than doubling.

Where there is demand, there is a long way to go to crack down on piracy

The problem of film and television piracy has become one of the focuses of attention and attack in the industry in recent years. At the iQIYI World Conference held in April, Gong Yu denounced, "Internet piracy has become more serious in the past two years. Works can be found on major online disks within two hours of being online. It's terrible. Some people are stealing our works and stealing our property."

Video platforms have been pirated for a long time, but they can do very little. For the reasons why movie and television piracy continues to be banned repeatedly, AI big model Doubao gives six points of analysis:

Online piracy has a huge profit. Stimulated by huge profits, many people have participated in piracy activities, forming a black industry chain, and based on the fission of Internet technology, the industry has developed rapidly. It is worth noting that many pirated transactions are carried out on social platforms such as WeChat group, which is difficult to be monitored in time.

As for legal punishment, Qu Hongtan, a lawyer from Beijing Yingke Law Firm, said to TechWeb, "In practice, intellectual property cases often have ambiguity in the calculation of the amount of loss. In some cases, it may not be possible to make a completely accurate claim on the amount of compensation." The low cost of illegality and the high cost of rights protection have also become a difficulty in combating piracy.

But from the source, there will be market only when there is demand. Only when people can get high-quality authentic content more easily, will piracy gradually decrease. In contrast, the operation of video websites over the years: limited screen projection, advanced on-demand broadcasting, Taowa style membership, members also need to watch advertisements, etc., which has consumed the user's copyright awareness that was hard to cultivate.

Having been mired in losses for more than ten years, video websites do not want to burn money for the market, but instead pursue efficiency and profitability, and actively explore ways to generate income. This is not wrong. After all, only when the days of video websites get better can more money be spent on making good content. It is only at the cost of sacrificing user experience while generating revenue through various means.

The return of former member users to piracy may just be the first alarm for the long video industry. To combat movie and television piracy, a third-party technology platform needs to provide special technical detection, strengthen the judicial protection of copyright, and video websites need to be less routine and more sincere while generating income.