Produced by Radar Finance Text | Shiye Editor | Deep Sea On the morning of November 11, the big V Liushen Leilei published an article on the WeChat public account titled "Huang Zheng, are you sure you want to chop young people like this?" "Article. Liushen Leilei said that a book

Produced by Radar Finance Text | Shiye Editor | Deep Sea

On the morning of November 11, Big V Liushen Leilei published an article on the WeChat public account called "Huang Zheng, are you sure you want to chop the young man like this?" "Article. Liushen Leilei said that a book titled "The Demon Mirror of History" published by his friend has encountered a large number of piracy on the Pinduoduo platform. As of now, the number of views on the WeChat official account of this article has exceeded 100,000+.

Radar Finance noted that this is not the first time this year that Pinduoduo has been bombarded by Internet giants due to pirated books.

In January this year, the well-known economist Ren Zeping and the well-known financial writer Wu Xiaobo issued articles one after another criticizing Pinduoduo’s piracy problem. Wu Xiaobo stated in the article that all three volumes of "Thirty Years of Turmoil" written by him that he bought on Pinduoduo were pirated books. Ren Zeping blasted Pinduoduo for being flooded with pirated new books that cost just a few yuan each.

In fact, Pinduoduo’s problem of pirated books has been publicly pointed out many times, but the problem has not been effectively solved. As early as 2018, Zheng Yuanjie publicly pointed out Pinduoduo’s piracy problem. Now, six years later, the piracy problem has still not been solved. Radar Finance noticed that on the Black Cat complaint platform, Pinduoduo received 757 complaints about pirated books from Pinduoduo. This number is even higher than the other two platforms - Taobao and JD.com combined.

Why is Pinduoduo’s problem of pirated books difficult to solve? Some analysts pointed out that under rapid growth, Pinduoduo’s review and supervision of merchants is obviously insufficient. In addition, Radar Finance has seen through the Judgment Documents Network that it is not easy to obtain legal support for the infringed author or publisher's claim that the Pinduoduo platform is jointly and severally liable.

Liushen Leilei issued an article "complaining" about Pinduoduo's piracy problem.

Liushen Leilei stated in an article on November 11 that currently, on the Pinduoduo platform, the sales volume of the pirated book "The Demon Mirror of History" published by two of his friends is one of the largest. There are nearly 200 copies in one store. In addition, "Liu Shen Leilei's Reading of Jin Yong" published by Liu Shen Leile himself was stolen into a miniature version, and the "photocopied version" of "Guangmingding of Tang Poems" has also appeared on Pinduoduo for a long time.

Liushen Leilei also mentioned in the article that another big v - Chen Xingjia's essay "At the Turn of the Xiajiang River" in recent years has also been pirated on Pinduoduo, with some stores selling more than 2,000 copies. The article also included a screenshot of the suspected WeChat Moments of Chen Xingjia. In the screenshot of

, Chen Xingjia said with "righteous indignation" that Pinduoduo platform, as a commercial organization, has the obligation to ensure that the platform does not sell pirated books. "It should have a minimum sense of social responsibility and should maintain the basic social moral bottom line, rather than deliberately doing so for traffic and profit." Pretend to be deaf or blind.” Chen Xingjia also questioned at the end of the article, "They are both platforms, so why are there no pirated copies of this book on JD.com and Dangdang?"

Big Vs who have also criticized Pinduoduo over the issue of pirated books include the well-known economist Ren Zeping, "The King of Fairy Tales" "Zheng Yuanjie and financial writer Wu Xiaobo, etc.

Radar Finance noticed that as early as July 2018, fairy tale writer Zheng Yuanjie publicly reported on Weibo that a merchant on the Pinduoduo platform sold pirated "Pipilu" series of books. Subsequently, Pinduoduo responded that the platform had closed the store involved, froze the funds, and blacklisted the store based on Zheng Yuanjie’s report.

However, a few years later, as Pinduoduo promised to combat piracy, Zheng Yuanjie and Pinduoduo seemed to have reached a settlement. In April 2021, according to Guangming.com, the "Fairy Tale King Flagship Store" authorized by Zheng Yuanjie, the national anti-piracy ambassador, officially entered Pinduoduo during the "Duoduo Reading Month".

According to reports, at that time, the person in charge of Pinduoduo’s platform management said that Pinduoduo was still increasing its crackdown on pirated books. “At present (Pinduoduo) is the first to apply artificial intelligence algorithms, conduct mining and analysis based on massive data, reconstruct model libraries for illegal merchants, product identification, fake identification, inferior product identification, etc. from the bottom up, and carry out 24-hour online inspection of book products. Inspection.”

Judging from the “bombardment” of the big guys, to this day, the problem of widespread pirated books on Pinduoduo has not been effectively solved.

On January 14 this year, Ren Zeping published a post entitled "Five Questions to Pinduoduo: Either you condone thieves, or you are a thief yourself. It's time to pay attention to the rampant counterfeit goods!" ” article, the first question in the article is about Pinduoduo’s book piracy problem. Ren Zeping questioned that the prices of books and other products on the Pinduoduo platform are astonishingly low. The platform is full of new books for a few yuan each, including books on the first day of sale. Ren Zeping believes, "This is a serious infringement of the author's originality and intellectual property rights! This is blatant condonation of illegal and thief behavior!"

Wu Xiaobo said in an article in January this year that the price of pirated books on Pinduoduo platform is significantly lower than Other Dangdang and other platforms. For example, Wu Xiaobo said that he bought his own book "Thirty Years of Turmoil" on Pinduoduo, and the three volumes were priced at 21.15 yuan. Dangdang's "Thirty Years of Turbulence" is priced at 75 yuan for both volumes. He also warned that under Pinduoduo's indulgence in piracy and "refund-only" double whammy, the book industry may be the first to be ravaged to death. Sacrifice.

The number of complaints about pirated books ranked first among the "three major e-commerce platforms"

Radar Finance searched on the Black Cat complaint platform and found that the number of complaints about pirated books on Pinduoduo was significantly higher than the other two major platforms - Taobao and JD.com.

Specifically, using "JD pirated books", "Taobao pirated books" and "Pinduoduo pirated books" as keywords to search on Black Cat Complaints, the search results were: 757 complaints; 324 complaints and 182 complaint. The number of complaints on Pinduoduo’s platform exceeds that of JD.com and Taobao combined.

According to the search content on the platform, most netizens are complaining about Pinduoduo’s merchants selling pirated products. There are also complaints targeting the Pinduoduo platform, believing that the platform is unfavorable in handling piracy issues. Some netizens said, "Pinduoduo does not support the counterfeit products and compensates three for each, and does not provide refunds. It does not punish illegal merchants." Some netizens also complained that Pinduoduo condoned the sale of pirated books and delayed the processing.

Radar Finance noticed that there are also a large number of lawsuits related to Pinduoduo’s pirated books on the Judgment Documents website.

On the judgment document website, Radar Finance on the evening of November 11th, using Pinduoduo’s main company - Shanghai Xunmeng Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xunmeng Company") as a keyword search result was 68282 Articles, including 59,365 involving intellectual property competition disputes; 3,056 involving copyright disputes, including 2,904 judgment documents articles.

Radar Finance reviewed some of the judgment documents and found that in the lawsuit, Xunmeng Company argued that the company itself is a platform of the well-known e-commerce company "Pinduoduo" The Taiwanese operator only provides network technology services and is not the seller of the accused infringing works. It does not participate in any activities during the merchant's sales process. It has not committed any infringement of the plaintiff's copyright and has no way of knowing where the accused infringing works are stored. The purchase, warehousing, sales, and distribution of the allegedly infringing works have nothing to do with it.

Radar Finance reviewed multiple judgments and found that many courts recognized this statement.

For example, the "Second Instance Civil Judgment on Copyright Ownership Disputes between People's Communications Publishing House Co., Ltd. and Huangdao District Gujing Bookstore, etc." issued by the Intermediate People's Court of Qingdao City, Shandong Province shows that People's Communications Publishing House advocated that Xunmeng Company should respond to pirated books jointly and severally responsible for the problem.

The Qingdao Intermediate Court held that Xunmeng Company promptly took the necessary measures to delete and disconnect the link after receiving the subpoena from the court of first instance, and that it had fulfilled its reasonable duty of care. There was no evidence in this case to prove that Xunmeng Company had anything to do with it. Gujing Bookstore jointly carried out the act of selling the accused infringing books or jointly obtained infringing benefits. Therefore, Jiaotong Publishing House believes that Xunmeng Company failed to take necessary measures in a timely manner and should bear joint liability with Gujing Bookstore. This claim lacks factual and legal basis and the court will not support it.

So, as a platform party, is Pinduoduo really not responsible for the actions of platform merchants? Wu Yongzhen, a lawyer at Jiangsu Subo Law Firm, believes that third-party trading platforms, as platform providers, have an obligation to review merchants; if they fail to fulfill their review obligations in the early stage, they should bear corresponding consequences if they fail to review those that are obviously involved in infringement. responsibility.

Lawyer Wu Yongzhen further pointed out that in reality, the platform is more likely to be unaware of the infringement at the beginning. Later, after the infringer complained or reported it, it failed to perform corresponding obligations, including removing products from the shelves, disconnecting links, etc. In this case, the third-party platform must bear joint and several liability for the expanded losses. If a platform is aware of the existence of infringement but adopts a laissez-faire and conniving attitude, it will bear the same liability for infringement as the infringing party.

Huang Zheng once expressed his stance on rectifying the "fake product problem"

Radar Finance noticed that a few days after Pinduoduo went public that year, Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinduoduo, responded to the outside controversy at a media communication meeting. At that time, Huang Zheng admitted that the problem of copycat products on the Pinduoduo platform was more serious than fake products, and he strived to introduce solutions to combat copycat products within the next month.

Huang Zheng further said, "We have always been very serious about combating counterfeiting. Today, we actually mixed the problem of copycats with the problem of fake goods. Public opinion has further turned all merchant problems into fake goods problems. These days, it is not just about competition. Opponents, all kinds of people are conducting comprehensive supervision on us. In the long run, it also saves a lot of manpower and material resources, because once the problem is found, the next step is how to solve it."

But to this day, the issue of Pinduoduo’s counterfeit products is still frequently discussed online.

According to Tianyancha, so far, Xunmeng Company alone has been involved in more than 5,000 judicial disputes. Among them, the proportion of cases in which Xunmeng Company is the defendant is as high as 99.2%, and the cases that occurred in 2023 in the past five years accounted for the highest proportion, reaching 28.9%.

According to the cause of the case, the top 10 judicial disputes are trademark infringement disputes, work distribution rights disputes, design patent infringement disputes, copyright ownership, infringement disputes, work information network dissemination rights disputes, network Service contract disputes, online shopping contract disputes, sales contract disputes, utility model patent infringement disputes, and work copy right infringement disputes.

Looking at the list of plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit against Pinduoduo, you can see that they include CITIC Publishing , 361, Guangdong Mobile, Hengyuanxiang, Reader Culture , Septwolves , Xtep , oppo, Youngor well-known companies, etc.

Some analysts pointed out that there are two main reasons why Pinduoduo has frequent counterfeit goods problems: First, during the rapid expansion of the platform, the review and supervision of merchants was insufficient, resulting in the influx of a large number of inferior goods and fake goods. market.Second, Pinduoduo uses a low-price strategy to attract consumers. In order to reduce costs and increase profits, some merchants are willing to take risks and sell fake products.

In addition, the difficulty in safeguarding consumer rights is also one of the important reasons why the problem of counterfeit goods is difficult to eradicate. Faced with complex rights protection procedures and high rights protection costs, many consumers can only choose to give up on rights protection or admit themselves to be unlucky.

wind data shows that Pinduoduo’s revenue has grown rapidly in recent years. In 2023, Pinduoduo achieved operating income of 247.639 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 89.68%. In 2016, Pinduoduo’s operating income was 505 million yuan. In the past seven years, Pinduoduo’s revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 142.3%.

Thanks to the surge in stock prices brought about by the company's high performance growth, Huang Zheng briefly became the richest man in China this year. On August 9, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that Huang Zheng, the 44-year-old founder of Pinduoduo, had a net worth of US$48.6 billion, replacing Nongfu Spring founder Zhong who had occupied the top spot since April 2021. Suisui became the richest man in China.

Radar Finance will continue to pay attention to the follow-up progress of Big V’s attack on Pinduoduo’s pirated books.