Disney sues Gu Amo for copyright infringement, may be sentenced to 3 years in prison

On July 31, Gu Amo, the author of the video "X Minutes to Take You Through the Movie", went to the Taipei District Court for mediation again after being sued for infringement by five companies including Disney. Gu Amo said that it was not convenient to comment on the case at present, and hoped that the other party would provide a specific compensation plan before there would be room for discussion. He also revealed that the next mediation meeting would be held on the 15th. At present, Gu Amo has not contacted the person in charge of Disney Asia, and two of the other four companies have expressed their unwillingness to reconcile.

Two years ago, Disney and five other film and television companies sued Gu Amo for infringement, claiming that his series of short films "Watch XX Movie in X Minutes" violated the Copyright Law by using movie clips without authorization. Although Gu Amo argued that his short film reviews such as "Watch 5 Episodes of Twilight in 4 and a Half Minutes" and "Watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy in 5 Minutes" were secondary creations and did not infringe, the prosecutor compared the original films and believed that his videos only used other people's videos with his own narration, not simply "quoting" but "adapting". Moreover, he made considerable profits with these short films, which was suspected of profit-making, so he had violated the Copyright Law for unauthorized adaptation and public transmission methods to infringe on the property rights of others' copyrights. The maximum sentence is 3 years in prison and a fine of 168,000 yuan.

At today's mediation meeting, Gu Amo insisted that he was not doing it for money, and that he made these videos only to educate those who did not understand movies.

Public information shows that Gu Amo's real name is Zhong Weiding. In 2016, he began to create a series of short videos on the Internet called "Watch XX Movie in X Minutes". With these short film reviews, he gained 980,000 fans on YouTube and the total number of hits exceeded 300 million. In 2013, he officially founded the "Knowledge Candy Digital Social Media Company" with a capital of 5 million yuan and served as chairman.

Many netizens expressed their support for the rights protection of Disney and other companies. Compared with the money earned by Gu Amo, this amount of compensation is already very low. The copyright space and boundaries of self-media have always been a sensitive topic. Many self-media started making videos under the banner of non-profit, but copyright protection is really important.

Previously, the self-media account "Bigger Research Institute" under Papi Jiang's short video MCN organization "Papitube" was also sued by VFine Music for music infringement and claimed more than 250,000 yuan. These cases mean that copyright regulations in the field of short videos and audio will gradually improve, and the interests of content creators will be better protected.