Hu Ge plays the role of Mei Changsu in "Nirvana in Fire." (Photo/Xinhua)
A handful of Internet writers made a killing last year as screen adaptations of online novels such as "Nirvana in Fire" and "The Ghouls" scored phenomenal audience ratings and box office sales.
The online novelist "Tangjiasanshao" made 110 million yuan (17 million U.S. dollars) in copyright royalties last year, the highest earner in the industry for three consecutive years. However, most of his peers are barely making ends meet.
Online writers missed out on 10 billion yuan in lost royalties in 2014 due to rampant piracy, according to a white paper released last month by iResearch, a domestic consulting firm.
Only 26.5 percent of web users regularly read legal copies of books. More than half read pirated texts online or downloaded free copies from web forums, network disks or cloud services, the paper said.
"Only 5 percent of online novelists can support themselves fully through writing," online writer "Shefayouya" told Xinhua.
"Most of my peers write thousands of words every day on legitimate literary sites in order to earn subscription fees, but the content soon gets leaked to forums and network disks, making our efforts utterly worthless," he said.
"Shefayouya" said the largest channels for infringement are Internet bulletin boards and forums, where some users post copyright-protected content in serial or even resell the content at low prices.
EASY INFRINGEMENT, HARD PROTECTION
China has strengthened its efforts to crack down on piracy in recent years, culminating in the closure of hundreds of illegal content-sharing websites. However, Internet users still manage to find ways to download content without payment or punishment.
On Chinese social networking sites such as Baidu Tieba, users post messages containing torrent sharing files, most of which are stored in cloud services or online file-hosting services.
