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Some audiobook platforms frequently issue pornography-related infringements, and reporters investigate the chaos in the audiobook market

Investigate motivations

Not long ago, some netizens said that some chapters of Motie Books' audiobook "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise" on Himalaya and other platforms had indecent background sounds. This news quickly rushed to the hot search and sparked heated discussions in the society.

  

Subsequently, Motie Books issued an apology statement, saying that the audiobook was commissioned by Tianjin Yuexiang Culture Communication Co., Ltd. to be produced by Beijing Motie Shumeng Information Technology Co., Ltd., and Motie did not conduct a strict and meticulous review of all audio files. Grinding Iron will carry out internal rectification and further improve the audit mechanism.

  

In recent years, the rapid development of the mainland's "sound economy" has also brought some market chaos. In order to expose the problems existing in the industry and promote the development of norms, the reporter conducted an in-depth investigation and interview.

"The audiobook market should be well managed! The content is so explicit, and it ridicules the people's police so much! Mr. Zhang, a citizen of Tianjin, said angrily.

  

Recently, when Mr. Zhang was listening to a book on a certain platform, he found a book titled "Cool! The audiobook of "Drunken Beauty Police Flowers at My Mercy", the cover is a picture of a beautiful woman wearing a white police uniform to highlight her figure. After listening to it for a while, Mr. Zhang found that the plot content in it was suspected of playing a side ball, and found that the work had been played more than 900,000 times.

  

Clicking on the author's homepage, Mr. Zhang found that the audiobooks he uploaded, the titles were more "exciting" than the other: "Desire: My Confused Youth", "Merry Beauty Teacher Loves Training", "Youth Desire: My Sexy Sister" and so on.

  

According to public information, there are currently more than 40,000 enterprises related to the "sound economy" in the mainland, of which about 13,600 are newly registered enterprises after 2019, the number of content on audio platforms has increased significantly, the number in 2023 is 135 times that of 2016, and 9 times that of 2020, and the scale of domestic audio users is expected to exceed 350 million in 2026, and the revenue of the online audio market will increase to 51 billion yuan in 2028.

  

While the audiobook market is developing rapidly, some audiobook platforms have been criticized for pornographic and vulgar content, as well as copyright issues and false publicity and dubbing training. How to promote the healthy development of the audiobook market has become a topic of social concern.

Some audiobook platforms frequently issue pornography-related infringements, and reporters investigate the chaos in the audiobook market

Comics: Li Xiaojun

Vulgar pornography is frequent

There is a lack of effective response to the report

Mr. Zhang said: "I flipped through a few pages casually, and it turned out that there were all kinds of rubbing audiobooks on the platform. What is the bottom line that such a book can pass the review? In the past, my children always listened to stories on the platform, but now I don't let him log in to the platform. ”

The reporter of "Rule of Law Daily" noticed that this kind of side-rubbing audiobook is more common on many platforms. Several respondents expressed extreme disgust.

  

In July, when Ms. Li from Shenyang, Liaoning Province, was taking a taxi to a high-speed rail station, the driver kept playing an audiobook. "At first, it was relatively normal, but after a few minutes, the "style of speech" changed abruptly, and the novel began to describe the details of men and women having sex, and they kept making gasping sounds, which made me very embarrassed to hear. After I coughed a few times intentionally, the driver also scrambled to close the audiobook. ”

  

Mr. Yin from Changshu City, Jiangsu Province, told reporters that recently, when he played small games on social platforms and web pages, he often popped up some audiobook advertising interfaces, marked with words such as "Don't miss the wonderful content, the storyline is wave after wave" and "The author really dares to write, especially the third chapter", and the content is pornographic.

  

"This kind of pop-up ad is easy to touch by mistake, sometimes the content will be automatically played when you shake the phone, once I didn't wear headphones on the subway, and the sound was broadcast after clicking, which directly made me 'social death'." Mr. Yin said that such pop-ups are all for drainage, and after clicking, they will jump to the novel platform, where there are more pornographic novels, which can be read as pages or listened to as audio books, "I really don't know how it passed the review."

  

The reporter noticed that the values transmitted by the content of individual audiobook platforms have been distorted and deteriorated, such as searching for "brother and sister" on the Home of the platform, there will be a non-loving drainage title, searching for "teachers and students", and what pops up is a drainage title that promotes teacher-student love.

  

A media survey of more than 1,400 netizens has been conducted, and more than eighty percent of the respondents reported that it is not uncommon to listen to audio and brush up on soft pornography, and five out of ten respondents said that they "often see it". More than sixty percent of respondents have the impression that there is more soft pornography in audiobooks and radio dramas. After encountering these problems, nearly seventy percent of respondents will choose to "report directly"; However, nearly half in ten respondents have never received a response to their reports.

  

Regarding the indecent sound of the audiobook, or the content is rubbed, pornographic and other problems, some industry insiders said that it may be that the production team did not strictly control the selection of sound effects, or deliberately added some stimulating audio to attract listeners; It may also be that the production team does not censor the audio and content enough.

  

According to the industry insider, bad content in audiobooks can have a multifaceted impact on listeners: causing disgust, fear, or other bad emotions in listeners, which can affect mental health; For minors, bad content also has a negative impact on the shaping of their values and morals, and it is easy for them to form wrong perceptions and value orientations.

Infringement issues are frequent and frequent

Some platforms are not strictly reviewed

"Before we met: Where did the rich second generation trust come from? Don't don't ...... What's the use of being good-looking? Don't don't ...... After getting acquainted: Xiao Lu's summary report is really well written, and Xiao Lu's cooking is really delicious......"

"Dong Chi: Where does the rich second generation trust, don't don't, I want to return it for no reason in seven days. A week later, the report written by Wen Qingyang is so good, Wen Qingyang, you solve the case so quickly......"

 

When Mr. Wang from Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province recently listened to the audiobook, he saw that the introductions of the two audiobooks were very similar, and he needed to recharge his VIP membership to listen to all the contents. After listening, Mr. Wang found that in addition to the introduction, the content of the two audiobooks was also very similar.

  

"Guess which novel is the original? In fact, these two books are not originals, and neither of these two books wrote the original author, nor did they use the original title, but directly changed the title and the name of the protagonist and uploaded it to the platform for profit. I contacted the administrator of the platform where the original author worked, and they said that they were not currently authorized to record and upload audiobooks. Mr. Wang said.

 

Some netizens found that in addition to the different names of the characters in them, some audiobooks are exactly the same as other audiobooks from content to introduction, and even the cover of the book is the protagonist in the original book. The misappropriation is blatant.

 

The reporter combed and found that in recent years, there have been many denunciations of the infringement of audiobook platforms.

 

In 2022, Tencent sued LIZHI App for infringement of providing the "Three-Body Problem" audiobook, alleging that the defendant Lizhi Company provided a large number of unauthorized online listening, playback, cache and download services of the Three-Body Problem audiobook through its official website and "LIZHI" application software, which seriously infringed the plaintiff's copyright in the works in question. In the same year, Wu, the author of the novel "Stain", sued Himalaya for infringing his copyright, and in the end, Himalaya lost the lawsuit and was awarded 30,000 yuan by the court to the author Wu.

 

In April 2024, Weibo user "Call Me Xiaodu" posted that the work he completed in July 2022 was similar to the content of the first chapter of a work updated by a Himalayan anchor. The author reported piracy infringement to the Himalaya App, but has not received a response as of press time.

 

However, some of the fan group managers of the infringing authors said that although it is obvious that it is infringing, in fact, the process of protecting rights is very difficult. On the one hand, because there are too many audiobooks now, and those that are not particularly popular are difficult to find even if they are "cloned"; On the other hand, even if the other party is found to be infringing, it is difficult to successfully defend its rights in a short period of time, and the other party can go to other platforms to continue the infringement by changing the "vest".

 

Some interviewees raised the question that users upload unauthorized audiobooks and infringe the copyright of the original authors, and in this process, should the audiobook platform also be liable for the infringement?

 

According to the Civil Code, "where a network service provider knows or should know that a network user is using its network services to infringe upon the civil rights and interests of others, and fails to take necessary measures, it shall be jointly and severally liable with the network user." The Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Civil Disputes Involving Infringement of the Right of Information Network Transmission stipulate that "where a network service provider clearly knows or should know that network users are using network services to infringe on the right of information network transmission, but fails to take necessary measures such as deleting, blocking, or disconnecting links, or providing technical support or other assistance, the people's court shall find that it constitutes an act of aiding and abetting infringement."

 

Wang Zhengzhi, a partner at Gawain Law Firm and director of the Intellectual Property Professional Committee of the All China Lawyers Association, said that the production of audio books should obtain the permission of the copyright owner of the written work, and that recording and disseminating the audio version of another person's work without the permission of the original author constitutes an infringement of the copyright of the original author.

 

"The business model of the audiobook platform is generally that the anchor, that is, the user of the platform, uploads the audio works to the platform, and the platform provides information space storage services. Although the platform does not bear direct liability for infringement of the infringing audio uploaded by the anchor, if the platform knows or should know that the anchor is disseminating the infringing audio and fails to take necessary measures to stop the infringement, it constitutes aiding the infringement and shall bear joint and several liability. Wang Zhengzhi said.

 

In Wang Zhengzhi's view, there are four main reasons for the uneven quality of audiobooks and the frequent occurrence of infringements:

 

The audiobook industry chain is complex, involving multiple parties such as the original author of the novel, the anchor, the audio producer, and the audiobook dissemination platform, and involves a complex distribution of interests.

 

As an emerging market that emerged at the same time as short videos, audiobooks have not yet formed unified management, standards and norms, which affects the healthy development of the market.

 

Audiobooks are uploaded spontaneously by anchors (users), and in the face of massive audio, it is difficult for the platform to comprehensively review and lack strength. Moreover, some audiobook platforms excessively pursue commercial interests and relax the censorship of audiobook content;

 

Some novel authors do not have a strong sense of copyright, and when signing relevant contracts, they are unclear about the authorized content, usage methods, income distribution and other issues, and disputes arise afterwards.

The training is suspected of false advertising

Inducement of loan purchase services

In addition to the content problem, the reporter found in the investigation that there are also many problems with the "audio dubbing training" that comes with some audiobook platforms.

"0 yuan learning", "easy to take orders", "sound realization, you can also easily earn more than 10,000 yuan a month"...... At the end of April this year, Ms. Zhao, a citizen of Shanghai, participated in an online free training camp, hoping to learn dubbing skills and earn some money through dubbing side hustles.

  

"The free course lasts for five days, and the first to fourth days are audio and broadcast classes to learn about dubbing channels, etc., and students will also be organized to play pia plays (improvisational, entertaining reading and dubbing activities)." Ms. Zhao said that during this period, the so-called senior sister released a dubbing task, and she recorded a few sentences casually that day because she was too tired, but she was still praised violently. On the fourth day, the senior sister began to recommend paid training, saying that after the training, she could get an exclusive audio broadcaster certificate, and then settled on the platform, and the book list was endless.

  

"Before the last day of the class ended, the senior sister began to urge the students to pay money in the group and private messages, showing the 'achievements' of the previous students. Once some students hesitated because of the price, the senior sister offered to take out a loan to buy the course, saying, 'You can earn money soon after learning, just like if you don't have a loan'. Ms. Zhao recalled that she felt unreliable and did not pay the money, and after several students at the same time as her signed up and paid the money, they did not receive a single book list for a long time.

 

Mr. Zhou, from Wuhu City, Anhui Province, told reporters that he spent 3,980 yuan to buy the above training course because "mobile phone recording is not good", and was later asked to buy 2,999 yuan of recording equipment. After the course, Mr. Zhou settled on the platform, but found that there were very few book lists to grab.

 

When promoting, they promised that there would be big names in the industry to teach, face to face with the masters, and play in the audio field for 3 months. In fact, only a few students were instructed online. "There are a lot of book recording resources, don't worry about not having a book record" and "earn 60 yuan to 80 yuan per hour", none of these promises have been fulfilled. Mr. Zhou said that the course does teach dubbing skills and the like, but the copyright owner gives priority to the timbre, which is either born good or requires a lot of time training, which is basically not available to new students. A few months after I started recording work, I almost "didn't get any grains", and then I felt cheated.

 

The reporter searched on a third-party consumer complaint platform and found that there were hundreds of complaints about the audio dubbing training that comes with the audio platform.

 

Faye Wong, a senior partner at Beijing Jingjing Law Firm, said: "The platform's behavior of exaggerating the training effect and inducing consumers to buy its services is suspected of false advertising. From the perspective of consumers, if the lawful rights and interests of business operators are harmed due to the use of false advertisements or other false publicity methods to provide goods or services, they may demand compensation from the business operators and request that the competent administrative departments punish them. ”

Increase the cost of infringement penalties

Strengthen content moderation management

Recently, under the guidance of the National Press and Publication Standardization Technical Committee, led by the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, organized by the Audiobook Professional Committee, and participated by 28 institutions such as Guangdong Da Audio and Video Publishing House and China Braille Publishing House, the national standard for "Audiobooks" was officially released and will be officially implemented on October 1 this year. This is the first national standard in the field of audiobooks.

In recent years, relevant departments have cracked down on illegal activities such as the dissemination of bad content and piracy and infringement on audiobook platforms through special actions such as "Sword Network" and "Special Rectification of Online Audio Chaos"; Promote the drafting or revision of the "Provisions on the Governance of the Online Information Content Ecosystem", the Copyright Law, and other relevant laws and regulations.

 

The interviewed experts believe that the emergence of the problem of indecent audio in audiobooks is not only a problem for audiobook production teams and platforms, but also involves the attitude of the entire society towards cultural and entertainment products. For the bad content of audiobook platforms, it is urgent to take a series of measures to strengthen supervision.

 

The reporter noticed that some large-scale audiobook platforms have set up content security centers, established review bases through their own research and development or the introduction of artificial intelligence, big data and other technologies, and carried out platform content checks with the help of "AI + manual" review. Moderation has become a precursor to content publishing on many platforms.

 

Liu Guozhao, a lawyer at Beijing Yinghe (Shenyang) Law Firm, believes that the production team of audiobooks should strengthen the review and management of audio content, and strictly control the use of inappropriate background sounds. Relevant platforms should strengthen the review of the content of audiobooks to ensure that the content heard by users is healthy and appropriate. The regulatory authorities should also formulate corresponding regulations and standards to strengthen the supervision of audiobooks and safeguard the rights and interests of users.

 

Faye Wong believes that the introduction of a third-party quality inspection agency can be considered, and the third-party quality inspection will issue relevant certificates after the inspection, which can improve the subjective problems such as the inevitable trade-off of interests in self-quality inspection.

 

Regarding the copyright risk of the platform, in Liu Guozhao's view, the platform should establish a scientific and effective review mechanism:

 

There are two types of users on general platforms, the first is professional actors, cultural media companies and other main users whose main business is the production of audiobooks, and the second is ordinary individual users. For the first category of professional users, the platform should review more strictly, in addition to reviewing the legality and reasonableness of the audiobook content, it should also conduct a substantive review of the copyright legality of the audiobook. In other words, users should be required to provide materials that can prove the legitimate source of their reading materials and carefully review them, such as the platform needs to review the object, right, term, and implementation method of the copyright authorization contract.

 

For the second type of users, it is necessary to establish an effective channel for accepting "infringement reports", respond in a timely manner after receiving the infringement notice, and take necessary measures to ensure that the infringement notice "responds to everything"; It should be noted that if ordinary users upload recordings of some well-known works but cannot provide valid authorization certificates, the platform should not upload them.

 

For the faulty acts of platforms and the infringement of relevant users, the cost of infringement punishment should be increased by strengthening legislation and practicing punishment cases. Today, with the rapid development of Internet technology, it is entirely possible to supervise platform infringement through technical monitoring, so as to achieve early detection and early treatment and reduce the occurrence of infringement incidents. At the same time, it is also necessary to strengthen the popularization of the law and enhance the public's awareness of copyright protection.

 

In order to further promote the healthy development of the audiobook industry, Faye Wong suggested that the relevant normative documents should be refined to provide practical reference for industry operations, further refine standards, and strengthen supervision; Establish industry autonomous organizations, carry out inter-industry exchanges and self-management, and carry out higher standards of self-discipline management above the bottom line of public power supervision; Establish and improve channels for public supervision, and give the public appropriate supervision powers.

 

"Online platforms and users are distributed in different regions, so the regulatory authorities need to establish a sound cross-regional coordination mechanism to ensure the effectiveness of supervision," Liu said. It is also necessary to establish a sound system of laws and regulations, strengthen the supervision of the audiobook market, formulate laws and regulations on copyright protection, market access, quality standards, etc., clarify the rights and obligations of all parties, and provide legal guarantees for the standardized development of the market. At the same time, establish and improve the law enforcement mechanism, increase the intensity of law enforcement, severely crack down on infringement, piracy, false propaganda and other illegal acts, improve the efficiency and transparency of law enforcement, and maintain the order of fair competition in the market. ”

Author: Zhang Shoukun, all-media reporter of the Rule of Law Daily