You call this entrepreneurship?

Chapter 390 Public Opinion Versus Public Opinion

"Piracy on Internet video websites has become so rampant that it is alarming. If we do not crack down on piracy, it will have a huge impact on the entire entertainment and cultural industry, and will also kill the future of video websites."

Sohu CEO Zhang Chaoyang gave a righteous speech when being interviewed by a Sohu reporter, criticizing the various chaos on current video websites.

Zhang Chaoyang expressed deep sorrow that the current situation in the video website market is not optimistic.

"They blindly indulged in the rampant piracy and were immersed in the rapid growth of user numbers and active data, but they were completely unaware that they were eroding the foundation of video websites."

“The core of a video website is high-quality content. Only a steady stream of high-quality content can attract users.”

"The production of high-quality content is inseparable from the protection of the creators' intellectual property rights. If the interests of creators cannot be guaranteed, how can they create more and better content?"

"The website is full of pirated content, with content copied from other websites everywhere. Even the creators' names have been erased and they have been transformed into someone else's work."

"Some websites openly spread pirated movies and TV series in the name of user uploads and sharing, which seriously infringes on the interests of the cultural and entertainment industry. I call on the cultural and entertainment industry and film and television companies to stand up and jointly condemn and boycott this phenomenon."

"I call on my fellow Internet users to respect intellectual property rights, protect copyrights, and cultivate users' awareness of genuine products without delay."

Zhang Chaoyang launched a strong attack on the entire video website industry, and Sohu.com published several news items in a prominent position on the homepage.

Tencent, NetEase and Sina all reprinted the article verbatim, with a mentality of watching the fun and not being afraid of trouble, as they watched Sohu bombard the entire video website industry.

……

"Childish!" Gu Yongqiang threw the mouse on the table with a gloomy face, saying bitterly, "Boring! Psychopath!"

Gu Yongqiang gave three consecutive comments to his former boss Zhang Chaoyang, and he was so angry that he laughed.

Zhang Chaoyang is not criticizing the rampant piracy. He is mocking his peers and firing an AOE map cannon.

He really thinks that Zhang Chaoyang has lost his mind. Are there any pirated video websites now?

Why open a video website without pirated resources?

Even Qvod, a website that claims to support genuine resources, has a lot of pirated American dramas copied from YouTube.

Thinking of this, Gu Yongqiang was stunned and vaguely felt that something was wrong.

Zhang Chaoyang would not say anything about piracy for no reason. There must be a conspiracy here.

Gu Yongqiang immediately picked up his phone and called Wang Wei of Tudou.com, as well as the owners of several websites including Ku6.com, 56.com, and Liujianfang.com.

About an hour later.

A few people met in a teahouse and sat in a private room, holding their teacups and sitting silently facing each other.

Gu Yongqiang looked at his colleagues and spoke first, "Tell me, guys, have you figured out what our boss Zhang is going to do?"

Wang Wei from Tudou.com turned his head and looked at the people around him, and suddenly felt that he seemed out of tune with them.

Gu Yongqiang, CEO of Youku.com, was formerly the president of Sohu.com; Li Shanyou, CEO of Ku6.com, was formerly the senior vice president of Sohu. Wang Jianjun, vice president of 56.com, was also the senior vice president of Sohu.

Except for Wang Wei from Tudou and Liu Yan from Liujianfang, all the people sitting in the box came from Sohu, so there was nothing wrong with what Gu Yongqiang said about our boss Zhang.

Li Shanyou of Ku6.com took a sip of tea and sighed, "Boss Zhang, this is not a good intention for you."

Wang Jianjun of 56.com sneered, "I don't think he will come for us."

Gu Yongqiang shook his head. "From the looks of it, he's not coming for us, but for the entire video website industry."

Liu Yan, the boss of Six Rooms, is still a 25-year-old young man. He acted very relaxed and said with a smile: "Zhang Chaoyang is really arrogant. Their Sohu Video can't even compete with my Six Rooms, and he is so arrogant that he wants to target the entire video website industry."

"If he wants to target the entire industry, he has to face the Qvod Internet Cafe first. If the sky falls, there will be someone watching. Now there will be something exciting to watch."

Seeing Liu Yan's gloating expression, Gu Yongqiang said coldly with a stern face, "Yiku.com and Qvod.com have formed an alliance, as well as Sohu Video. They are now in the same group."

Liu Yan's face froze, he was a little confused, and he sat up straight, "What are they going to do?"

"What for?" Wang Wei sneered, "Of course I'm here to grab some food."

"If you want to grab food, just grab it properly. Why do you have to do this?" Liu Yan frowned. "It's incomprehensible. He talks about protecting intellectual property rights, as if Sohu respects intellectual property rights so much."

"I just don't believe that Sohu Video is clean. Even Qvod is full of pirated content. How shameless is Zhang Chaoyang to say such things."

Video websites all rely on copying other people’s content, using the banner of UGC and claiming to be user sharing.

It seems that the content is uploaded spontaneously by users, but in fact the website specifically finds people to register accounts in the name of users to upload pirated content, and use pirated film and television resources, variety shows, and even high-quality videos from other websites to drive traffic to their own website.

Basically, more than 70% of page visits on all video websites are supported by pirated content. It can be said that pirated content is the lifeblood of their traffic.

So Liu Yan felt that Zhang Chaoyang’s proposal to protect intellectual property rights and crack down on piracy was completely incomprehensible.

Right from the start, he went for the root of the entire video website industry. How stupid must one be to do something so detrimental to others and himself?

Does Zhang Chaoyang think that by defeating other video websites through piracy, his Sohu Video will become bigger and stronger?
It's simply impossible.

Without pirated film and television resources to attract traffic, what content can you rely on to support your crappy website?

The other people in the box didn't say anything and didn't comment on Liu Yan's statement.

Don’t they know that piracy is illegal?
Of course they know, but this is the current situation. The current status quo of video websites is that they cannot survive without relying on those pirated traffic-generating websites.

But relying on pirated resources is doomed to fail in the long run. Putting aside other issues, just listing a website cannot allow large-scale piracy to exist.

These bosses have thought of other ways to change this situation before. They want to rely on completely user-generated content to attract users and gradually get rid of the embarrassing situation of piracy.

But all this takes time, and they don't have time right now.

The video website has only been established for less than a year, so there is no time for it to transform.

Cleaning up piracy now would be tantamount to suicide.

It can be said that Zhang Chaoyang hit everyone's sore spot with this move, making everyone hate him to the core.

Liu Yan was getting a little restless. He was under the most pressure among the group. Before he opened the website, he had not anticipated that the bandwidth expenditure of a video website would be so huge. Now he still owed money to the bandwidth service provider.

If Zhang Chaoyang really came to interfere, just creating a public opinion storm and scaring the investors would be unbearable for them.

Video websites cannot be weaned off from support. Without continuous investment, they cannot survive.

In order to get investment, the website must have achievements and value.

What is the most valuable thing on a website? Of course, it’s the data.

The current situation is that without pirated resources there will be no users, and without users there will be no value.

Liu Yan was the first to stand up. "I'm the youngest here, so I'll say the bad words!"

"I don't care what Zhang Chaoyang wants to do. I can't just watch him destroy our industry. If he wants to cause trouble, I won't sit there and wait for death."

Wang Wei pulled him and frowned, saying, "You're anxious again." "How can I not be anxious?" Liu Yan said angrily, "They want to bleed us."

"You have to keep calm for now." Li Shanyou said slowly, "Sohu just shouted a few words, and you can't sit still. What can you do when he really takes action?"

"Boss Zhang may just be testing the waters right now, and may not really take any action."

Gu Yongqiang put the teacup back on the table and said seriously, "We can't let this trend spread at the moment. After the public opinion hypes it up, who knows if it will cause the administrative department to suffer."

Everyone present fell silent again.

This is what they are most worried about. No matter how much Zhang Chaoyang criticizes, although it is irritating, the lethality is limited. He cannot kill his colleagues with words alone.

If the iron fist of the administrative agencies is brought in to rectify the industry, then it will be the end.

Li Shanyou said slowly: "The most important thing right now is to change the direction of public opinion and fight public opinion with public opinion."

"You know, the majority of users are on our side when it comes to piracy."

Liu Yan's eyes lit up, and he immediately patted the armrest of the chair to agree, "Yes, if he can criticize, we can criticize too. We can't just let him speak alone, we also need to have our own voices."

Gu Yongqiang frowned and said, "You can't just say that the website is engaged in piracy. You have to use a roundabout strategy, and don't expect this to have much effect."

"The entry point we choose should be to hijack public opinion on the Internet, rather than dwelling on the issue of piracy. We must not fall into the other party's trap."

"That's right." Li Shanyou nodded. "Mr. Gu's words are wise and prudent for the country. We should not only hijack public opinion, but also make good use of our video website industry."

"Don't we have an anti-Qvod alliance? Let's organize everyone, explain the interests to everyone, and ask our peers to speak out together."

"Our video website track has only been out for less than a year. Administrative agencies will not introduce regulatory policies so quickly. We still have time and room."

"Mr. Li is right." Gu Yongqiang tapped the armrest of the chair with his fingers and said, "Anti-piracy is to force all the peers to death. This is destroying the industry. The administrative agency will not let Zhang Chaoyang do this."

"We still have time. We still have at least three years, which is enough for us to transform."

In fact, Gu Yongqiang knew clearly that the three years was just a consolation.

He estimated that it would be good if it could last one to two years, because the website could not be sustained for that long relying solely on financing from venture capital institutions, and going public was an inevitable choice.

Before going on the market, removing pirated resources is a necessary step.

Just as everyone was discussing, Gu Yongqiang suddenly received a phone call, and his face changed after listening to the call.

After hanging up the phone, he said in a deep voice: "Everyone, we don't have much time, we must act quickly."

Li Shanchang felt something was wrong, so he asked, "What happened?"

"Yiku.com is finished." Gu Yongqiang sighed, "Sohu News just released a message that Zhang Chaoyang proposed to establish an online video anti-piracy alliance. Yiku.com was the first to voice support and said it would participate."

Everyone immediately found a computer and went to the homepage of Sohu to check the news.

Then I saw the words written in the most prominent position, calling for the establishment of the "China Online Video Anti-Piracy Alliance"

Sohu Video advocates that all parties holding Internet video copyrights should take positive action and form an anti-piracy alliance.

The alliance aims to jointly resist online infringement and piracy, maintain the normal order of the online video market, and promote the process of online video legalization.

Together we have formed a broad united front against piracy, which is a collective sword against video piracy websites and an unprecedented self-revolution in China's online video industry chain.

At the same time, Zhang Chaoyang issued 10 action slogans for the Anti-Piracy Alliance.

We call on online video websites not to disseminate video works that are not legally authorized, and require resource sharing websites to filter out the upload of video works that are not legally authorized.

We call on advertisers and advertising companies to raise their awareness of copyright and not place advertisements on any video websites or content suspected of infringement, so as to safeguard advertisers’ interests and brand image in genuine Internet video advertising.

We call on judicial authorities to increase criminal penalties for infringement and piracy in the field of online videos, and call on all sectors of society to raise citizens' awareness of respecting intellectual property rights.

The Anti-Piracy Alliance will resolutely combat piracy in the online video industry through unified and joint legal actions.

After reading this article, everyone's face turned green. "Qvod.com will soon follow suit and make a statement. We must act as soon as possible."

"Mobilize the media right away. Anyone who has connections in this area, please don't hesitate to contact them."

Wang Wei hesitated for a moment, "This will cost a lot of money."

Gu Yongqiang glared at him and said, "It's already this time, and you still care about this. If you don't spend the money now, you will never have another chance to spend it."

Liu Yan followed up and agreed: "Boss Gu is right, this money cannot be saved."

At this critical juncture of life and death, no one dared to delay and immediately contacted reporters and media outlets, and spent a large sum of money to hire ghostwriters to write PR articles to whitewash the situation.

Then they waited for public opinion to ferment, and the "Anti-Qvod Alliance" became more cautious and did not publish directly in the media.

Instead, they first find small accounts to distribute soft articles in various forum communities, Baidu Tieba, campus networks, Tianya and other places on the Internet to attract netizens' attention and win everyone's sympathy.

You have to know that piracy is popular on the Internet. Everyone thinks that the Internet is all about sharing.

See what's wrong with piracy, we should support piracy more.

If you want to engage in "anti-piracy" activities, you are standing against the interests of the majority of netizens, which will definitely cause them to curse you.

An influential article, "Anti-Piracy Alliance: A Product Driven by Profits," appeared online and was quickly forwarded to major forums, attracting the attention of netizens.

The article describes the origin and development of video websites in a very detailed manner, and emphasizes that video websites are designed to facilitate users to upload and share content, and that their birth has given them this sacred mission.

Users have the right to upload the content they want, and no one can interfere.

The spirit of video websites is openness, inclusiveness and sharing, rather than blocking and depriving netizens of their right to watch videos freely.

At the same time, the article also wrote about the huge cost expenditures of video websites, and indirectly described the difficulties faced by several video website owners in starting their own businesses.

They spend a lot of money and resources just to get netizens to watch pirated resources.

What kind of spirit is this!

This is the true spirit of free sharing on the Internet!
These points in the article touched the hearts of netizens, who felt that they were so damn right.

I can watch whatever I want. They are all uploaded and shared by users. Why do you care whether I am pirating them or not?

Some people who like to watch the fun but not afraid of trouble called on netizens to take action and organized a petition campaign with 10,000 signatures to boycott the so-called "Anti-Piracy Alliance".

We netizens won’t buy your bullshit!
Then, a media article was published, "How far can you go, the "Internet Video Anti-Piracy Alliance"?

The article directly states that it is totally unrealistic to set up an anti-piracy alliance on the domestic Internet. It is a complete fantasy.

At one time, several media outlets followed up and published articles expressing their pessimism towards the so-called anti-piracy alliance.

(End of this chapter)