Battle on Chinese social networks for copyright and intellectual property
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Battle on Chinese social networks for copyright and intellectual property
Wang Hao, a.k.a PG One, a rapper who recently won the champion of The Rap of China (the Chinese ‘The Voice’), is giving rise to a copyright dispute recently.
Since his debut, the rapper is calling himself “Magneto”. After his victory, Magneto-related content exploded the search algorithms of the most popular platforms, like Baidu and BiliBili. The problem is that Magneto is not only the name of this rapper but it is obviously the name of a character well known to the fans of Marvel’s X Men. And the fans of the comics began to get very angry about on Weibo, realizing that it would have been very difficult now to access the contents of their favorite character.
Therefore, they decide to collect all the evidences and sent it to the legal department of Disney and 20th Century Fox, including the social campaign of Estee Lauder and McDonald’s that illegally using ‘Magneto’ for the rapper.
We all know that social media is an extraordinary opportunity for brands to mobilize genuine advocate communities, but the great lesson of this story is the emergence of public debates (38,6 million views, 520,000 discussions on the hashtag) on the Chinese social sphere about copyright and intellectual property essential to the development of art and innovation.
Chinese debate medical rights after pregnant woman’s suicide
The HotTopic this week is extremely sad. On Sep. 3rd, a pregnant mother was reported commit suicide during parturition. Later, her relatives and a hospital in Yulin, Shaanxi province, are blaming each other for rejecting the woman’s request to have a caesarean section, which allegedly led to her jumping to her death from the fifth floor of the hospital.
According to the hospital’s statement, the pregnant mother, Ms Ma’s doctor advised her and her family to have a caesarean section due to “high risk of doing natural birth”, but her family refused and signed a document at the hospital confirming that Ms Ma would deliver naturally. Later, she was transferred to the delivery room on Aug 31, but later left the room several times because of pain. She asked her husband to allow a caesarean section, and her doctor and nurses also advised her husband to allow the surgery, but all requests were rejected, Ms Ma became emotional and lost control due to pain, and jumped out of the building later that day and died.
But further investigation show that the hospital was hiding the fact. The parturition memo showed that all the index during the process was good, and the risk level was maintained at the low level; testimony of the accoucheuse and the director of gynecology and obstetrics also approved this. Also, the hospital was suspected loss of supervision, which finally lead to the tragedy. Until now, the accident is still under investigation from National Health and Family Planning Commission.
Though the fact of this accident was still not fully clear yet, the death of Ms Ma has already sparked a debate on women rights on Chinese social media (210 million views, 630,000 discussions on social media). Many women are sharing their thoughts/experiences of pregnancy on social media, and fight against the tradition value that implies woman is just a tool for her husband to carry on the family line: “It’s so sad that most Chinese women can’t live for herself, but her husband, her child, he family.”
Love at school
A cut from a Japanese TV show went viral in Chinese social media recently. In the show, the students and teachers of a school were invited to held a “love announcement party” on the rooftop; the person who wants to confess his or her affection to someone will go to the rooftop to speak it out loud in front of everyone.
The footage that went viral is a love announcement from a 14-year old boy: he met “the angel of his life” in the first day of his sophomore year at school — the girl sitting next him. He was so excited but shy to tell the girl he likes her. However the result was not as good as in the classical romantic story: the girl already had a boyfriend.
The adorable confession of the boy reminded netizens their young age. Chinese started to share the video on social media commenting that this scene couldn’t happened during their time at school. Relationships between teenagers at school and the discovery of love were banned by parents, teachers and the school administration on the grounds that such relationships were considered pernicious or even dangerous for the concentration of students and to divert them from the royal road to education. They are now pleased with the positive evolution of school for education and Chinese society.
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Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on September 14, 2017.
