On the evening of May 22, Andy Lau responded to the controversial ad plagiarism of Audi Xiaoman, which once again aroused public attention.
Yesterday, FAW Audi swiped the screen in the social circle with a “Xiaoman” advertisement starred by Andy Lau. Soon, however, the highly acclaimed ad was accused of copywriting. For a time, there was an uproar, and Andy Lau, Audi and advertising companies were involved in the dispute one after another.
As a world-famous auto giant, FAW Audi turned over the car in the advertisement. At the same time, it also makes people think about many difficulties of copyright protection in the era of short video.
The incident has happened. Who needs to bear the responsibility? How to define the boundary of plagiarism? How to protect “creative labor” in the era of short video? The reporter contacted and interviewed a number of industry insiders for the first time on the issues we are concerned about.
Andy Lau responded to the advertisement plagiarism
Audi “Xiaoman” advertising plagiarism is still fermenting.
On the afternoon of May 22, Andy Lau issued a document at the official support association app Huazai Tiandi, saying, “I have 100% respect for the original. This incident, I personally deeply regret the problems of the advertising team in the creative process and the trouble caused to brother man. Audi and the advertising company are now seriously dealing with it.”
That morning, FAW Audi officials also apologized for the trouble caused to Andy Lau, brother man of Peking University and relevant parties due to poor supervision and lax audit in the incident; The creative agency has been instructed to deal with it as soon as possible and give a satisfactory reply to the public; Before the official clarification of the facts, Audi’s official channels comprehensively removed the video from the shelves.
Back yesterday, it was the 24 solar terms “Xiaoman”. FAW Audi launched the advertising film “Xiaoman today, Xiaoman is good in life” played by Andy Lau, and brushed the screen on social media for a time.
According to media reports, the video was praised and forwarded more than 100000 times on wechat video number and played more than 4.55 million times on Audi official wechat.
However, controversy ensued. On the 21st, the Tiktok blogger “Beida man Ge”, who has more than 3.7 million fans, sent a video saying that this Xiaoman advertisement of Audi copied his video copy published on May 21, 2021.
Man ge of Peking University showed the original text written by him in the video: “If there is a little heat, there must be a big heat, and if there is a little cold, there must be a big cold, but there must be no big full, because the big full is actually not in line with the wisdom of the ancients. On Xiaoman’s day, the ears of wheat begin to be full, but they are not yet fully full, which is particularly good. It represents an attitude towards life, that is, we have been pursuing perfection, but we do not require perfection. So from this angle Xiaoman is the best solar term of the year and my favorite day… The flowers are not in full bloom, the moon is not round, and the mountains are slightly drunk. There is no need to worry about profits and losses. In the end, small man wins everything. “
“Man ge of Peking University” said that he was not copied for the first time. Someone moved his video and brought in millions of yuan. But I’ve never seen such a word for word plagiarism advertisement.
One stone aroused thousands of waves, “Audi Xiaoman advertising plagiarism” rushed to the top of microblog hot search.
who is responsible for plagiarism
According to the statement of FAW Audi, the video was submitted and implemented by M & C Saatchi, a creative agency. Based on the principle of not avoiding problems, it has been instructed to deal with the infringement of documents as soon as possible and give a satisfactory reply to the public.
Today, M & C Saatchi, the advertising company involved, also admitted that there was “plagiarism”. According to the company’s statement, the company’s Audi service team is the Audi Xiaoman brand video development team. In the process of video content development, due to the company’s weak copyright awareness, the company’s Audi service team directly used the content of the “Xiaoman” video written by Tiktok blogger Beijing man without communicating with the copyright owner.
“We apologize and sincerely apologize to the original author, and promise to do our best to make up for the loss to the original author. Our company solemnly promises to respect and protect the rights and interests of the original author in advertising creation and strictly prevent this from happening,” the company said
Why does plagiarism occur in such a grand place? It has been reported that the advertising company may not reach an agreement with Xiaoman in the early negotiations with Peking University.
In this regard, a senior person in the automotive advertising industry believes that it is unlikely. He said that judging from the level of video production and the popularity of artists, the advertising budget of FAW Audi is estimated to be more than 60 million yuan. “But in general, even if we invite a professional screenwriter to write a copy of this long-term advertisement, the price is about 6 Shenzhen Sdg Information Co.Ltd(000070) 000 yuan. For such a large project, there is no need for both sides to care about such a little cost.”
So which link is the problem? The person believes that it is likely to be related to the review mechanism of video advertising copy.
It is understood that at present, mainstream advertising companies have a relatively perfect review and proofreading mechanism for new media copywriting, while for video products, copyright review focuses more on images, sound effects and so on.
“Screen, sound effects, soundtrack, portraits of characters, and generally all the contents that may appear in the works will be bought out by advertising companies in the early stage.” The source cited an example, “we went to the summer palace to take photos some time ago. Because the summer palace itself also has property rights, we will pay a copyright fee for it.”
However, under the layers of process, there is still a “hundred secrets and one sparse” this time.
“To be honest, when it comes to video production, copywriting is actually a blind spot for copyright evaluation.” The person believes that the general video production is an outsourcing team. Once someone at the front conceals or ignores the source of the copy, the later process is not easy to be found.
Who will be responsible for this plagiarism?
“Once resorting to law, it may not only be a case of two or three parties, but also involve many parties.” Another person in the advertising industry told reporters that because there are often many agents in key customer projects, the problems will be very wide, “for example, if FAW Audi finds Andy Lau through the artist brokerage agency, the relevant brokerage companies will also be involved.” In addition, as far as the advertising company itself is concerned, the project also has subcontracting. “For example, M & C Saatchi is responsible for the main planning of the advertising of FAW Audi, but the specific shooting is completed by its downstream suppliers.”
The reporter noted that it was reported that the copy involved this time is likely to be an outsourcing supplier from advertising companies.
A brand person told reporters that from previous cases, advertisers and advertising companies may become defendants. “Generally, the licensing agreements of such advertising companies are tripartite agreements, that is, copyright owners, advertising agencies and advertisers. Therefore, they may be prosecuted in case of disputes.” However, the person also said that from the current situation, the advertising company may ultimately be responsible.
“If this incident finally enters the proceedings, it may involve many parties, and the amount of compensation will be amazing.
”The person said that if it is true to copy, the compensation that advertising companies may face will be more than ten million advertising budgets.
“Generally speaking, if the advertiser is unaware of plagiarism, the advertising company may bear all the liability for compensation. The amount of compensation not only includes all the funds invested in the early stage, but also converts the loss of negative effects on the brand according to the influence.” Specifically, the person said that it would be calculated by multiplying the coverage of the advertisement by a certain proportion. “This advertisement itself is very popular, so the resulting negative effects may be greater.”
plagiarism? Reference? How to define
However, while many netizens accused Audi of lax review of official advertising, some netizens also found that the “Xiaoman” copy of “Beida man brother” also had “reference” elements.
Some netizens found that as early as June 2017, a microblog blogger named “Yoli Youlin” had sent a similar copy. And it also starts with a little summer heat, a little cold and a big cold, which leads to the topic that there is only a small man but no big man. Finally, it shows that this is the wisdom of our ancestors.
Since then, more netizens found that similar copywriting about “Xiaoman” appeared on Douban and blogs many years ago.
In fact, when talking about the creative concept, “brother man of Peking University” also admitted that knowledge does not fall from the sky. Many knowledge in his works is also seen in books and learned from others. So, how to judge the boundary between “reference” and “plagiarism”?
“Creativity itself is not protected by the copyright law. The copyright law protects the expression formed based on this creativity. How would you form a paragraph to express such a view?” A senior lawyer in the field of intellectual property told reporters that the most criticized part of this incident is that the advertising copy and the original text of the blogger “Peking University Man Ge” have a high degree of correspondence in words, “including the choice of word order and words, this coincidence is very obvious.”
The lawyer believes that from the perspective of legal practice, due to the high similarity of the copy, if both parties resort to law, the advertisement is judged to be involved in infringement.
However, compared with the obvious similarity of the text this time, the lawyer also admitted that from the perspective of legal practice, the plagiarism of short videos is still difficult to define.
“Especially when it comes to the plot, it’s difficult for you to compare frame by frame.” He said that at present, the legal community has not found a clear standard for quantifying infringement comparison in terms of plot deduction and arrangement and shooting angle selection of audio-visual works. Therefore, in the current judicial practice, it is still difficult to define the “plagiarism” behavior in the short video industry.
“Many times, we have a subjective feeling about whether the video is plagiarized or not. We feel that it seems to be beyond the boundary of reference,” the lawyer said. “But this feeling cannot be quantified, and there is no relevant litigation to clarify this line. In addition, the cost of such litigation itself is very high, and there are still many gray areas in the industry.”
The difficulty of safeguarding rights also reflects the difficulty of intellectual property protection and prevention of infringement in today’s short video era.
“Generally speaking, from the legal level, it is difficult for advertisers to avoid such risks.” The aforementioned lawyer said that because the video involves too many elements and cannot be checked like words, it is difficult for advertisers to find problems in the audit process. “Therefore, generally speaking, the relevant rights and responsibilities can only be defined in the preliminary contract.”
“Now video advertising is an industrial project, and there are too many companies and processes involved in upstream and downstream.” The aforementioned advertising company also admitted that with the continuous growth of the process, it is more difficult for advertising companies to control the copyright of the whole process.
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