A TOTAL of 15 major Chinese online video-sharing platforms have collectively taken down 570,000 short videos involving copyright infringements, China’s copyright authority announced Wednesday.

Noting existing copyright problems among the 15 major video-sharing platforms, the National Copyright Administration summoned representatives from companies such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Pear Video and Bilibili over copyright concerns in September.

The authority asked the platforms to strengthen copyright management of their content to ensure that all copyrighted videos, music, photos and texts are published with proper authorization.

Copyright protection has significantly improved thanks to the campaign led by the administration. The platforms have been processing complaints through mechanisms such as 24/7 complaint channels, while some of them have even established blacklist systems for banned accounts.

Copyright supervision will be further strengthened in order to facilitate the healthy development of the short video industry, the administration said.

Also, on Monday, China Audio-Video Copyright Association required karaoke businesses to stop using 6,000 songs over copyright protection.

A quick glimpse at the 6,000 songs shows most of them are songs that date back to the early 2000s even the 1990s, with many of them composed and originally sung by Hong Kong singers.

China has been strengthening the legal and regulatory framework for intellectual property rights protection and in September last year, China announced a tough crackdown on intellectual property infringements to curb counterfeiting and combat copyright infringement.

And this July, China’s copyright watchdog launched a four-month national campaign to crack down on online copyright infringement targeting online reposts of articles, video clips and animation games.

The move banning karaoke businesses from using those songs is the latest initiative by China Audio-Video Copyright Association.

(Xinhua)