Online conflict chance to rethink copyright
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By Xin Haiguang |
On March 15, World Consumer Rights Day, a group of writers published a joint letter accusing Baidu Library, an online platform for file sharing, of infringing upon their intellectual property rights.
The letter claims that Baidu has "stolen our works, rights, and properties and turned itself into a market for thieves." So far Baidu Library contains about 20 million documents, many of which are still in copyright.
Baidu has just apologized to Chinese writers for its failure to protect copyright on its Baidu Library and promised to remove copyrighted works within 3 days. But is this enough?
There's been little public support for Baidu, which is unusual.
Normally the online public is in favor of downloading sites. Several attempts to impose tougher legal measures on piracy have been booed by netizens and the media. Last year, the Chinese government carried out a severe crackdown on bittorrent sites, prompting public disapproval and criticism.
This doesn't mean people have become more conscious of the importance of copyright. Instead, Baidu is paying the price for its controversial reputation. Baidu is the biggest Chinese search engine and an online behemoth. There are several other sites, such as Sina and Docin, which provide file sharing services, but the writers made a wise choice in targeting Baidu.
Baidu is often seen as engaging excessive monopoly and profiteering. Google, the biggest competitor of Baidu, exited the Chinese market in 2010. Google's advocates partly blamed Baidu for Google's withdrawal.
The writers accused Baidu of outright theft, and it's certainly true that there are many files on its platform which are pirated. But their enemy is the emerging Internet, not traditional piracy. Different legal rules exist here, and like other sites accused of pirating MP3s or movies, Baidu has defended itself by claiming to be only a "harbor" for such materials, not responsible for everything it hosts.
The struggle between writers and Baidu will continue. The case will enhance Chinese copyright consciousness. However, it may not end up with a simple moral judgment.
Baidu may be regarded as a villain. But over copyright issue, it has huge number of firm supporters and a solid social foundation as well. In the Internet era, the new reality is that sharing and pirating are just like the two sides of a coin.
According to Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard professor and one of the founders of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization dedicated to copyright innovation online, if illegal downloading makes you a criminal, then 70 percent of US kids are criminals. The figure is probably even higher in China.
If the law makes most people criminals, is it worth maintaining? Lessig argues that the copyright protection campaign has already failed and copyright reform is imperative in the Internet era. To make it feasible to deal with the most common cases and to restore the dignity of the law, copyright laws should become more lax.
Both Lessig and Chris Anderson, the author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price pin the hope of innovation in copyright on China. After visiting China, Anderson said that there was great hope for China to create innovative new business models based on free pricing.
But legal innovation is certainly difficult because the China's legal system is still being established and its ability to innovate is questionable.
The Baidu Library situation offers an opportunity for Chinese legal innovation. If the two sides can find a common interest, everyone can prosper. As one publisher in Anderson's book argues: The author's enemy is not pirates, but that their works aren't known by the public.
If the writers can tone down their anger and Baidu can become less arrogant, perhaps China could crate a kind of business model which preserves the open-source sharing spirit but protects writers' rights as well.
