The numbers coming out of China continue to amaze. There are 855 million digital consumers in China and they have more than twice as many internet users as the US has people. The Chinese are spending an average of 358 minutes per day online. They spend 8% of their online time streaming video content. A
I wrote the below post regarding the Qingdao Film Metropolis project in April of 2018. After we ran the post, I received threats of legal action and of violence against both me and my family. That led us to take the post down but now that Wanda has completely pulled out of the Film Metropolis
Currently, the number one film in China is the smash hit Hello Mr. Billionaire (US$306M and counting). It’s a comedy about a hapless soccer player who stands to inherit 30 billion RMB, but only if he can spend 1 billion RMB in a month (albeit with a number of complicated conditions, like no gambling, donating
Since 1994, China has had a quota on the number of foreign films that can be shown in Chinese theaters on a revenue sharing basis (i.e., with the Chinese distributor remitting some percentage of the revenues to the foreign film’s producer). The quota started at 10 per year in 1994, was increased to 20 films
Over the past couple weeks, the Chinese Internet has been abuzz with chatter about how Chinese movie stars allegedly underreport income via a dual-contract system in which only one contract is disclosed to the tax authorities. The ruckus started when television personality Cui Yongyuan uploaded a redacted actor employment contract apparently for Chinese A-list actress
I recently spoke in Beijing at a conference on legal protection of sports broadcasts, organized by the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Other speakers included Chinese judges, Chinese and American lawyers and academics, sports league and broadcaster general counsel, and American and European IP officials. What
Making a biopic – a biographical movie about real people– is complicated. And one of the biggest concerns is liability for defamation. In an ideal world, filmmakers would get everyone depicted in the movie to sign a release. But that’s often impractical: people want too much money, too much control over how they are depicted,
China’s copyright laws have been in line with the United States and the EU and other developed countries since China became a signatory to the Berne Convention in 1992 and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 2001. But it’s hardly news that you can get a pirated copy of pretty
China joined WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) in 1980 and it introduced its first copyright law in 1990. China adopted modern intellectual property laws as a condition of joining the WTO (the World Trade Organization) in 2001. 2001 China intellectual property laws amendments The 2001 amendments were the first round of modernization of China’s
A reader sent me a link to a report on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. The report, put out by the American Assembly at Columbia University, “is the first independent, large-scale study of music, film and software piracy in emerging economies, with a focus on Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia.” It is
