Regarding qidian’s privileged thing

Someone please tell me, in simple terms, what the controversy is with Qidian!

 

Technically, regarding US tax law and fair use laws, that isn’t true.

US tax law includes all forms of income as taxable (regardless of whether it is received as payment for a service or goods).
That includes money given by friends, family, etc... anything that doesn’t have a legal deduction is generally considered taxable income. Receiving payment for something isn’t part of the definition of taxable income.

Meanwhile, legally speaking, you are allowed to receive monetary compensation for something falling under the category of fair use. As that is the meaning and partly the overall point of fair use. Otherwise, teachers wouldn’t be able to show an educational video in a classroom due to them being paid to teach.

Whether fair use applies in this specific case, I’m unaware and have neither knowledge of case precedent or specific laws relating to it.

Thus, on the subject of US law, while payment can be an indication of the lack of fair use it, by itself, isn’t the solo determination of whether a use is considered fair.

(I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. It is merely pointing out that, according to several US law classes and a taxation class I have taken, your interpretation of the law is wrong.)

 

I will try to keep this as neutral as possible to allow you to arrive at your own conclusion. However, I would like to clarify beforehand that is something difficult due to the controversy regarding the situation. There are always several ways to view a situation and I'm merely able to provide mine.

Before Webnovel/Qidian came into the translating scene, (a decently long time ago now) almost every translation was fan-made for free.
While people were able to support translators through patreon, viewing the actual content was free and nobody tended to demand money for their translation services (any money received was completely voluntary and was more for supporting the translators then for the work itself) .

Then, Qidian (the legal copyright holder of the works) arrived onto the scene and realized there was a market for their webnovels. They told the fan translators to stop translating or they would send DMCAs (take-down notices) to the websites and threatened lawsuits (Currently unaware to any actual lawsuit carried out against translators). Keep in mind, at that time, the majority of people translating were small-time, merely doing it to spread the books they love in another language.
This upset the community, many translators had been translating these works for a long time now (years for some works). They had built up an audience for these works. What frustrated many was that Qidian decided to take the nuclear option, instead of attempting to slowly integrate through translation of new novels into English and improve the overall experience for readers and work with the community. With the threat of lawsuits and DMCAs, many of the smaller translators stopped translating fearing legal repercussions.
Although this action was completely within Qidian's legal right, the way they treated people who adored and were fans of the work upset many people. Many felt the way they acted was completely detrimental to the overall translating scene and only done to benefit themselves.

Soon after they'd taken actions to obtain a chunk of the market, they began charging people spirit-stones to view their novels. This, in turn, turned riled up the already upset community.
Nobody charged money for these webnovels. It just wasn't a thing that happened before that point, if they had charged money the novels wouldn't have been included on NovelUpdates due to their terms of service.
I don't remember exactly if Qidian's novels were ever banned from NovelUpdates for breaking the TOS, but the fact locked chapters were being shown under the updates tab also upset many people.

This caused further controversy.

Eventually, NovelUpdates prevented locked chapters from being seen unless you enable (or disable, I don't remember which) a specific option. Qidian's exact method of releasing chapters happens to work around a loop-hole in NovelUpdates allowing the first free chapters each of their novels onto the site.

Many people are still upset because of Qidian's (now called Webnovel in English) corporate actions on these issues and are boycotting their site continuing to call them out on it.

That's the basic situation of Qidian's controversy from my perspective.
If anyone has anything to add, please feel free.

 

You forget about the NDA thingy

 

Right... I had forgotten to mention the Non-Disclosure Agreement.

However, as I have no access to a specific legal document and (as far as I'm aware) both sides have different stories regarding the alleged breach of the Non-Disclosure Agreement, I will elect to not mention it further.

 

Thanks for the explanation! It does help if there are detailed wiki and forum discussion pages (you know, like what Anime-Suki has) for a series if one wants to avoid the legal/moral issues of fan translations.

 

nope
if you really want to know whole thing then there thread about history of translation community some post covered LN and WN predate donation sustem which introduced by WuxiaWorld and Gravity Tales
by read that you will have better understanding toward Qidian drama which covered on Qidian megathread
that drama have big influence on wn translation community
similar with when Baka-Tsuki bombarded by DCMA...hmm or DMCA I forget correct term
NUF pretty lazy to make one cuz those who know or care seem have become lazy bum
like this cute cat

 

While there may not be filler, imo web novels are written differently than physical novels in that, you can pick up a single Harry Potter book (for example), and still get the complete story of that single arc, whereas for most web novels, there is no clear beginning or end to a plot line or it may stretch until the end of a thousand chapter story, so obviously you can’t just drop the book off after reading what you want. For example, I can read the hobbit by itself, and while it will be worth it to continue into LOTR, I don’t have to, as Bilbo’s story began and finished in a single book worth say 15 dollars. However, for a web novel like side character transmigration, the main plot line is introduced from around the third or fourth arc but apparently only finishes after 2000 chapters, so if you want to see a conclusion, you need to see it through to the end. Which on webnovel means spending much more money than reading physical, capable of being stand alone stories.
Tldr, while you may be getting value for word count, story wise it may be a ripoff (or something)

 

I never said something being payment is a part of the definition of taxable income. I actually said the complete opposite... Since it is income that is an immediate result of a service/good provided, it is considered payment for that service/good. Income you receive for services/goods is payment (there are, as always, exceptions that generally don't matter in the context we are talking about).

Education is precisely the only time when it is actually Fair Use... That's why Fair Use was introduced...
Unless you can proof to me that providing translations of webnovels is in any way educational, that doesn't matter at all for the context we are talking about...

And just to make that clear. The difference I am talking about is:
The reason for the payment is completely different. Teachers provide education, for which they are paid. How they present that knowledge is not part of the discussion at all. If they find something they deem a good example for what the want to teach, they may use it under fair use. They don't get paid more or less depending on which books or papers they quote as long as they manage to share their knowledge with it...

Translator on the otherhand aren't paid for simply being alive. It is precisely because of what they provide (their translations) that they receive money. If they decided to translate something else, their payment would directly be affected because that is what their clients/consumer/reader (whatever you want to call them) pay for (or donate for, if you prefer that term)...

Imagine not having to pay your university because your astronomy professor quotes papers from SpaceX researcher instead of NASA and you don't like the SpaceX program... You aren't paying for what material they provide, but the knowledge they teach with it...

You even made that distinction yourself, btw...

I never said that payment is the only determining factor of weither or not something is fair use... I only ever said that payment is one determing factor for when it isn't...

Neither am I a lawyer, but when this was a (more or less) hot topic, I actually took the time to read up on precedent cases specificly in the US (I am german) to actually understand what people here were at the time arguing about... And while I didn't find anything specificly for webnovel translations, I can't think they are handled that different from translations of "normal" published books (which there are more than enough of).

But the country mostly doesn't matter in the first place since Copyright and with it Fair Use are defined on an international level in treaties most of the world signed (China, USA and Europe included, for instance). There are differences in specific details, but they can mostly be ignored in the general context we are currently talking about. To be more precise I'm talking about the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (there are also others form the World Trade Organization, etc....), that are basically the base for any Copyright Law most anywhere in the world. That is either directly or indirectly. China based their Copyright Law on the US Copyright Law, for example.

 

Though rare, some at least WN authors who are fine with fan translations though that could change should that title get licensed in the region the fan translator lives in!

 

This is a strawman argument. Education being fair use is not the point I was making That is already an established fact.

I do not have the related knowledge to comment on the subject of fair use regarding web novels.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, I am not attempting to argue that translation is categorized under fair use.

I have no clue to case precedent regarding the subject, nor have I learned about specific laws regarding it.

The only message was essentially, ‘you are allowed to receive monetary compensation for a work falling under fair use.’

Your specific post earlier stated...

Legally speaking, that is incorrect. That would explicitly state that receiving payment is the solo determination for fair use and would cause a misunderstanding as to the nature of fair use to any potential reader.

While payment can be an indication of the lack of fair use, it isn’t the only determinate as you explicitly mention here.

That was the solo point I was making.

The other parts mentioned were trying to correct what seemed to be a misunderstanding over taxable income.

You mentioned earlier something similar to ‘(otherwise) to avoid taxes a boss could tip their waiter.’
I read that as implying that payment itself was part of taxable income. Potentially a misconception on my part. If so, I apologize.

I was trying to point out that, it is still considered taxable income regardless of whether the money was received as payment.
Tips, etc... are part of taxable income.

(I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

 

That's exactly what I try to convey with the education example.
And why I worded it that way.

You can get paid while using material under fair use. That's completely fine.
Researcher quote each other all the time and they get paid.

The problem is when you get paid, not for something that may or may not use copyrighted material as part of it, like critique, but precisely for providing that copyrigthed material itself.

To try myself at a simpler example, it's fine to get paid to make review videos of movies, you can even show material from said movie. It's not fine if you get paid because you distribute copies of the original movie and only that.

One is covered by fair use, one is not...
And that is exactly my point with the earlier quote. As soon as you make money off of the material itself and not it's transformative value as showcase material, you void fair use coverage.

 

That is mostly accurate.

The caveat being you don’t actually have to make money on a copyrighted work for it to be violating fair use.

Even without making money, violating someone’s copyright is grounds for a lawsuit.

Although, I believe the amount from damages is reduced if they don’t receive monetary rewards for their violation.

(I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.)

 

If you go further back in this thread you will notice that I even said that:

Majority, meaning there can be and probably are, exceptions to the rule.
The problem with that is that there are precedence cases for both sides in a similiar context.
Translated works can and can't be covered by fair use depending on specifics.
If there is no conflict of interests for example... If the original author made it clear that he will never sell a translated work, but the work is of public interest, it can be ruled that translated copies may be made available under fair use. And that already happened before.
Kind of a gray area there.

The talk about payment for translations came up later, when someone said he considered it fine and that is a completely different topic...

Edit: Words are hard...

 

Just for informative purposes translations do not fall under fair use or copyright infringement for some of the better translators.

The reason is they make sizeable changes to not just the wording but will also remove paragraphs. This is part of the reason QI wasn't that forceful when they first setup as they'd have to pursue charges in a foreign court which may not agree with their ever changing definition of copyright infringement. Second the liberty's taken in the translations means it is not a literal translation and is more of an artistic impression of the work in question. Also Chinese companies didn't originally license the potential translation of the work like Japanese companies were doing. Then there is the whole US and Japan thing compared to US and China.

All in all I liked it before qi inundated the scene with mediocre mtl novels for money, now there is rarely any good surprises from translators. When's the last time someone tried to break the record for chapters released in a week or day? Also there is almost no upward fluctuations in a novels release rate, the only fluctuations is getting less chapters in a week or it going back to normal and there are still translators that disappear without notice even though they are technically employed to translate...

 

Yeah, qidian took offense, understandable. Cause they were having a discussion with GGP behind the TL's backs. One look at the gravity now, and it's not hard to think what was their plan. I assume it was the same plan for WW too.
https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/licensing-issues-of-wuxiaworld.37613/
https://web.archive.org/web/2017060...mal-response-to-qidian-licensing-issues-post/

Qidian's post came in late May, the move from Gravity happened in mid-March, and according to the translators' words then, it was not a sudden decision. As for legality, it's all mojojojo. Qidian could be legally right, or not, can't say until the contract is out in the open. As for why WW shut up, maybe they're not legally right, maybe they are thinking it's not worth to fight a conglomerate like Qidian. The owner, RWX, still maintains he would pursue a legal battle.

As for your 'Qidian didn't need to threaten translators', Yes, they did. Because most of the novels were halfway translated and qidian (understandably) didn't want to waste resources on retranslating it again. So, they threatened to get the translators on their site.

 

I think it's working great, because Webnovel still hasn't stopped bringing new translated works every week.

They even have comics about most popular novels there!

You have to understand, number of people here at this forum don't even amount to 1% of Webnovel readers daily.

Yes, most people read for free at pirate agregator sites that steal everything and profit from it with ads.

But Webnovel has successfully appealed to their targeted group that are willing to buy their monetized works.

Then why are they successful?
The mobile application is very good.
It often has its UI updated to be even more user friendly.
Also a big variance of novels.
Two new novels each week.
Often has promotions.

When people have certain amount of money, they don't want to bother visiting 5-6 more sites daily for novel they like.

If they are in one place, why not buy it?

Also I am glad that the voices of those entitled readers that demand everything to be free, is gone.

According to them, because western books, which are published after a lot of proofreading, are 'superior' in quality and yet aren't as pricey as literally thousands more pages of a single webnovel.

There was a lot of 'stolen' nobels when Webnovel started out.
Turns out, translators decided to sell their translation work to Webnovel.

As for me, I only read through the mobile app, and I receive around 50-70 SS per day while completing the requirements for free SS that take a minute and half at most.

 

Yeah, remember the influx of chapters near the completion of ISSTH?

 

The problem with Webnovel is that, to my understanding, Qidian does have proper editing and proofreading...on the Chinese side. The English side on the other hand is plagued with errors even in premium novels with paid chapters. Maybe they should work out a deal with Grammarly or something because it can be really embarrassing seeing somebody use it's instead of its for the hundredth time.

Or Battle Frenzy where they sometimes forget to translate an entire sentence.

 

If the quality of translation (and source material) had a higher standard, they might've had a moral high ground to stand on - no one nowadays argues that the concept behind CR and the other anime streamers is flawed, most of the arguments are about exclusivity making watching streamed anime expensive if you want to watch a varied "menu".

From what I saw of the sort of stuff that appears on Webnovel, the translation is plain bad and the source material is usually amateur-level at best and is plagued with all of the symptoms of a bad writer. And that's without the cultural differences that turned me off chinese novels entirely in the first place.