Chapter Forty-Two: A Deeper Discussion of Piracy

Tang Wei’s situation had finally reached a temporary conclusion. Even after her rise to fame, she was still willing to remain by Gu Zhi’s side, and this moved him deeply.

Making a star is simple: a single blockbuster film or a popular television series can do the job. The real challenge lies in what comes after their ascent to stardom.

A single film, “The Butterfly Effect,” had brought Tang Wei fame and opened the doors to the upper echelons of the entertainment world. Once the total box office numbers were revealed—so long as it surpassed, or even matched, Feng Xiaogang’s “A Sigh”—a flood of excellent opportunities would naturally find their way to her, offering her leading roles.

Judging by the current box office trend, “The Butterfly Effect” was destined to win.

Under such circumstances, the temptations of fame and fortune are overwhelming for a newcomer. What young woman does not long for designer handbags, luxury cars, grand mansions, or to become the goddess of thousands? As long as she signed with Huayi, within two or three years she could have all of this, and perhaps even more.

Of course, the price was not negligible. There was a high chance that, during this process, she would have to compromise herself in the shadows.

All Gu Zhi could offer her was a promise.

The future is uncertain and ethereal; to forsake a feast within reach for a mere promise—one must either be truly naive, believing in an assurance with no guarantees, or be fully aware of the folly yet still choose to trust with unreserved devotion.

Gu Zhi wasn’t sure which kind of person Tang Wei was, but since he had accepted her unparalleled trust, he would never betray it.

“Wait—why does this sound so much like what a man says to his girlfriend after taking her first time in bed…”

...

Fortune and disaster are ever-changing, as is the waxing and waning of the moon.

No sooner had he resolved matters with Tang Wei than Gu Zhi received troubling news from China Film Group.

A week after “The Butterfly Effect” premiered, pirated copies were already circulating throughout the major cities!

And these weren’t the blurry, shaky camcorder versions, but clear, high-definition, uncensored master copies.

The market was flooded with pirated VCDs and DVDs of “The Butterfly Effect,” and the film was also available for download online.

“These pirates have absolutely no regard for copyright protection or the rule of law!”

Liu Qi had nearly shouted this into the phone when she called Gu Zhi with the news.

She was furious over the piracy incident. “The Butterfly Effect” was the first film she had produced, and she had poured half her energy and time into its production.

Originally, the film’s box office success, even though she wouldn’t share in the profits, had filled her with joy, and she had been sharing her happiness with friends everywhere. Now, with the onset of piracy, the box office was inevitably going to suffer.

But what truly infuriated Liu Qi wasn’t just the loss in revenue—it was as if “The Butterfly Effect” was her own child, painstakingly raised through hardship. After finally watching her child grow into someone outstanding, the neighbor, Old Wang, had stolen the child away with no effort at all.

And if Old Wang had merely stolen the child for himself, that would be one thing, but he had gone on to share the child with everyone, letting them all claim the title of parent.

This was her blood, sweat, and tears—her sleepless nights and tireless days spent nurturing this child.

To a creator, a work is like their own flesh and blood, while piracy is the reckless trafficking and dissemination of someone else’s offspring.

The more Liu Qi vented over the phone, the angrier she became, until it was Gu Zhi—the actual copyright holder—who ended up comforting her.

It wasn’t that Gu Zhi wasn’t angry about the piracy, but he understood the realities of the current environment in China all too well. He had never harbored any illusions; the leak of pirated copies was entirely within his expectations.

For cultural products like films, piracy is almost inevitable worldwide, but especially severe in China.

Even many foreign films that never saw a domestic release had pirated discs available in the country, let alone popular films still in theaters.

Gu Zhi understood perfectly well the roots of piracy, but he was powerless to solve the problem.

Without official intervention, piracy could not possibly be curbed, and the main reason was that the sources of leaks were difficult to guard against—most copies came from insiders.

No matter how vigilant one was, it was impossible to guard against thieves from within.

The production studios themselves were the primary source of pirated leaks.

Some employees, driven by greed, would provide source copies directly to the pirates; sometimes the studios would even turn a blind eye, with covert deals forming an entire underground industry.

The reason was simple: filmmaking was a money-losing venture at the time, with no guarantee of box office returns. Most studios relied on government subsidies to make films.

When legitimate avenues couldn’t bring profit, some people inevitably turned to crooked ones.

The second largest leak source was the distributors and theaters.

Distributors, being subsidiaries of the production studios, were themselves part of the piracy chain. Cinemas, holding master copies for screening, sometimes privately duplicated and sold them to pirates as well.

Piracy is, by nature, an illegal business, so these operations were not public companies but anonymous workshops, sometimes even set up abroad.

All this made regulation nearly impossible: you couldn’t prevent it, couldn’t catch the culprits, couldn’t stamp it out.

There was also a commonly held view that pirated films helped cultivate an audience for movies.

Gu Zhi had once agreed with this, but now, as a member of the industry, he realized how self-deceptive it was.

First, there was no need to “cultivate” a moviegoing audience. Film is an entertainment business, no different in essence from games or novels—yet no one ever claims that piracy helps create gamers or readers.

No one in their right mind would defend piracy in those industries.

There had always been a massive audience for films in China; just look at the box office for “Titanic”—360 million yuan in 1998. With such numbers, how could anyone say there was a lack of viewers?

Piracy doesn’t cultivate an audience; it siphons them away.

Most pirates would turn the source material into VCDs or DVDs for sale; later, as physical media faded, the pirated films simply became online downloads.

People who watched pirated films became, in fact, users of TVs and computers rather than moviegoers. More precisely, they developed the habit of watching VCDs, DVDs, or digital files at home.

Whenever a new film came out, their first thought was whether there was a disc in the shop or a download online, not going to the cinema. That is the kind of audience piracy nurtures.

In this way, piracy did nothing to help the film industry and, in fact, had a profoundly negative impact on Chinese cinema.

Already lagging behind the world, the industry needed massive investment to catch up, but the existence of piracy meant many filmmakers could not make a living.

If making films brought only loss, fewer and fewer people would pursue it, and the industry would spiral into decline.

Only when the domestic industry started to turn a real profit and attracted investment did piracy begin to wane, and the industry realized that the “peanuts” from piracy weren’t worth sacrificing the “watermelon” of legitimate business.

At the same time, the demise of the piracy industry, along with the rise of smartphones and smart TVs, brought a cold winter to the VCD/DVD trade. By the time Gu Zhi was reborn, such things were all but extinct in China.

Backwardness is doomed to elimination; inefficient industries are destined to vanish sooner or later.

Returning to the present, faced with piracy, Gu Zhi could do nothing but let things take their course and hope that the box office for “The Butterfly Effect” would not be too severely affected.

In fact, he had some ideas about cultivating a culture of paying for content domestically, but that would have to wait until he had gained more influence in the film industry.

Setting aside the displeasure brought by the piracy incident, Gu Zhi took out a new script from his desk drawer, one he’d completed during a sleepless night after taking Tang Wei home.

It was time to hit the road again.