Wang Yuanyuan

    OVERSEAS drama enthusiasts are quite upset because nearly all overseas drama, particularly American drama, has disappeared from nearly all video Web sites over the past month. This followed an announcement by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television on Nov. 12.

    The announcement heralded a crackdown on pirated videos on the Internet that resulted in all video Web sites deleting overseas drama in less than one day. Several American drama Web sites, such as meijumi.com, were blocked after the announcement, according to the Dongfang Daily.

    Popular drama, such as “CSI,” “Gossip Girl” and the “Vampire Diaries,” disappeared from video Web sites, including the most popular three Web sites tudou.com, youku.com and ku6.com.

    The restrictions resulted in hot discussion on the Internet. Although some netizens thought it was reasonable to forbid broadcasting pirated videos on the Internet, most netizens felt it was the end of the world.

    “I was a huge fan of American drama because it was much more watchable than Chinese ones. It has become part of my life to watch them on the Internet and I don’t know what to do without it,” Wu Zhongyan, a receptionist from a trading company in Shenzhen, said.

    “We have no choice but to watch the pirated vision online because Chinese TV stations don’t have these and only a few are shown on TVB Pearl and TVB World. It’s not fair,” she said.

    However, there are some super fans who can still find drama online. “Now it’s like a competition between Web sites. Some drama providers post them on the Web sites and it will be deleted in one day. So, what you have to do is to wait every night for the new episode of a drama. It’s tiresome, but that’s the only way,” said Yao Guangzheng, an IT engineer at Shenzhen video Web site, sougua.com.

    The restrictions had also made things hard for subtitle providers. “Competition for subtitle providers is quite intense and the loss of viewers and broadcasting platforms had made it worse. As far as I know, several providers have closed and big providers, such as Yidianyuan and Renren’aimeiju, have spent most of their time translating English education productions,” he said.

    “It was a pity because the quality of these providers was quite high and some even better than the translators at TV stations,” Yao said.

    After most video Web sites closed out American drama, downloading Web sites became popular again. “The video Web site used to be the biggest competitors of downloading Web sites, such as Emule, because people did not want to wait days to download one episode. It has become popular again because people had no choice.” he said.

    However, Yao thinks it is only a matter of time before restrictions follow on all channels showing pirated content. “With the development of the economy and improvement in society, there will be more and stricter measures to crack down on piracy in China for sure. Not only online videos but also products such as DVDs, clothes and accessories, so netizens have to prepare for no more free lunches in the future,” he said.

    But restrictions were not only applied at government level. Many video Web sites were now seeking opportunities to list on overseas stock markets. “If they want approval from overseas, they have to remove all pirated productions from Web sites. So this is just a start,” he said.

    Removing all the pirated productions, particularly drama, had resulted in sharp decrease in click rates on many Web sites and they were now trying to attract more viewers.

    One way was to introduce copyrighted productions. According to the Chinese media, sohu.com had already bought the copyright to air several drama series and soap operas including the “Big Bang Theory,” “Nikita” and “Gossip Girl.” “But it was a very unpleasant viewing experience because you had to put up with too many pop-up advisements. It was understandable to have advertisements, but Web sites had to find a more reasonable way to please viewers,” Wu said.

    In addition, some Web sites had also tried to attract viewers with original productions. One example was tudou.com which was now conducting its first original video competition where video makers could win awards of money from the Web site according to the viewership. “We plan to make this a long-term project, hoping to attract more video makers to upload their original productions. And we hope that high awards can inspire them to make more high quality productions,” Li Zhongling, vice director of the competition organization of the Web site, said.

    However, many netizens were not positive about tudou.com’s transformation. “It does not solve the problems of watching TV drama. Also, we would like to encourage video producers to make more good productions. But it is difficult for them to top overseas drama which is produced by professionals, so it is impossible for them to gain as many viewers as before just this way,” Yao said.