Li Shanyou: Pioneering in the fight against piracy requires more than just courage

BEIJING, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- "The hearts of editors at Ku6.com are bleeding. Pioneering the fight against piracy requires more than just courage," said Li Shanyou at the inauguration ceremony of the International Movie & TV Copyright Joint Procurement Fund (the "Fund") that has been jointly launched by Ku6.com and Sohu.com. On December 22, 2009, Ku6.com and Sohu.com, with the support of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the National Copyright Administration of China, the Beijing International Copyright Trade Center and CCTV International, invested US$5 million each to establish the Fund -- the first of its kind in China -- taking the lead in China's increasing effort to promote copyright protection. They also encouraged enhanced support from other websites in the industry. The move follows Ku6.com's announcement in Shanghai on December 15 that the Company plans to spend RMB300 million, building it into the country's number one video website.

Ku6.com began to clean up and delete un-copyrighted foreign films and TV series in late November, and as of December 22, the website had deleted all un-copyrighted European and American films and TV series. Meanwhile, Ku6.com also prohibits its users from uploading films and TV programs, and has enhanced its monitoring efforts while promising to block such content. Li said the website will see a decline in traffic as a result of the move, but this is an inevitable process. Ku6.com has taken the lead in arranging its editors to delete un-copyrighted western films and TV series every day, in order to essentially crack down on piracy. The website does not show any concerns over the decline, but is confident that traffic will surge in several months, when Internet users can only choose to watch copyrighted content because other websites will be deleting un-copyrighted videos too. For this reason, Ku6.com is expected to attract more users thanks to the copyrighted videos it purchases.

Sohu.com Chairman and CEO, Zhang Chaoyang said that Ku6.com has set the standard for the entire video industry by fighting against piracy through deleting un-copyrighted western films and TV series nobly from its website, which is indeed a very brave move. "No players in the Chinese online video industry dare to do so for fear of a decline in traffic or avoid doing this for various so-called reasons," Zhang noted. "It looks unpromising for video websites to rely on pirate content to increase traffic. Ku6.com totally caught other video websites off-guard with this anti-piracy move, which will finally force them to follow suit, thus speeding up the process of cracking down on piracy in the industry."

Use of copyrighted videos has become an inevitable trend in the sector and the anti-piracy action by Ku6.com marks a great milestone as industry players cannot achieve sustainable development if they don't use legal copyrighted video content, according to Wang Min, vice president of the International Copyright Trade Center.

SOURCE Ku6.com

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