CAVCA Sues Kuaishou for Music Copyright Infringement, Court Opens Nov. 9

The China Audio-Video Copyright Association (CAVCA) on Nov. 7 announced plans to sue Kuaishou for infringing on the recording producer rights of 5 songs and the music copyrights of millions of videos, demanding the platform to stop the infringement and compensation of 130,000 yuan. The court of the case will open on Nov. 9, 2020, Beijing time.

Short video as an industry has been thriving in China during recent years and Chinese users of short video platforms have reached 881 million, accounting for 87% of all internet users, according to the 2020 report released by state-owned organization China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA). The number of short videos published on a daily basis has reached as many as 10 million and background music is widely applied.

However, the recording producer right is often neglected and encroached on, which protects a producer’s right to exclusively owns his or her work and others should be paid or permitted to use the music.

CAVCA trusted the third-party testing agency Shanghai Music Copyright Service Platform to conduct the copyright monitoring of 63,688 songs used by content creators on Kuaishou App, revealing that the platform allegedly infringed the recording producer rights of five songs as well as violated music copyrights in 82.65 million videos shared in the app with more than 298 million total views.

Short video giant Kuaishou has just submitted its prospectus on Nov. 5 to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, two days before CAVCA’s conference was held and the lawsuit was publicly announced.