Economic Observer Online

Dec. 16, 2011

Translated by Song Chunling
Original Article: [Chinese]
 
China's two leading video websites - Tudou (土豆) and Youku (优酷) - have entered into a war of words over alleged copyright infringements.

According to Nanfang Daily, yesterday Taiwan CtiTV (台湾中天电视) and Tudou.com announced that Tudou's most popular variety program - Kangxi Laile (康熙来了) also sometime known in English as Variety Show of Mr Con and Ms Csi - was being illegally streamed by other video websites including Youku.

In the public statement CtiTV and Tudou said that they will defend their copyright and reserve the right to negotiate, report, prosecute or seek compensation from those who they claim have infringed on their rights.

In the open letter, CtiTV, which owns the copyright to the program, said that Youku had illegally played all the episodes of the show from Dec. 1 and "more seriously, those episodes are not uploaded by online users but uploaded and recommended by Youku itself, and they promoted the program, placing it in the most prominent position of Youku's own variety show section."

According to reports, after receiving repeated official complaints from CtiTV, Youku removed the episodes temporarily, but uploaded them all again on Dec. 8.

Then, on Dec. 9, Youku announced a start to its own campaign aimed at protecting the copyright of any its content that was being uploaded on to Tudou.

An industry insider told the EO that the "war" between the two websites may serve as an opportunity to solve the "copyright infringement" problems that exist in China.