Chapter 254: Enlightenment in Longchang, I, Zhang Yiming, must find a backer!
"No problem, I'll call Liu Zhiping now." Chen Yansen smiled faintly and agreed readily.
"Thank you, Mr. Chen." Zhang Yiming immediately breathed a sigh of relief and said with gratitude.
In his opinion, as long as active rectification is carried out and the infringing content is deleted quickly, the problem can be solved by paying a certain amount of money at most.
After all, he had already prepared himself mentally when crawling the contents of major portals.
After hanging up the phone, Zhang Yiming took the legal department with him, and the two of them went downstairs, drove his scooter, and headed straight to the nearby inspection office.
On the other side, Chen Yansen put down his mobile phone and continued to check the project data.
Zhang Yiming is not his son, and it is a fact that Lingxi Browser infringed his rights. He just ignited this bomb in advance.
How can young people understand the importance of clinging to someone powerful if they don't suffer a little? Fifteen minutes later, Zhang Yiming walked into the inspection office.
He thought he wouldn't be nervous, but when he stepped into the hall and saw the inspectors in uniform, his heart couldn't help but skip a beat.
"What can I do for you?" The inspector in charge of visitor reception looked at Zhang Yiming and the accompanying legal affairs officer curiously.
"I'm Zhang Yiming, the person in charge of ByteDance, and I'm here to help investigate the infringement of Lingxi Browser."
Zhang Yiming explained slowly.
"Lao Wang, take these two people to the inquiry room, and tell Captain Zhang that the Byte people are here." The inspector shouted to another colleague.
"Are you the head of ByteDance? What about him?" Lao Wang walked over and asked.
"Company legal affairs." Zhang Yiming answered truthfully.
"Come with me." Lao Wang said, and led the way to the inquiry room.
The legal department stayed where it was.
Although Zhang Yiming felt chest tightness and shortness of breath, he was able to keep his composure. He believed in Chen Yansen's ability and did not take the complaints from Penguin and other companies seriously.
A minute later, when he sat on the chair and faced two inspectors and three staff members of the Copyright Association, he couldn't help but panic.
"Mr. Zhang, I'm Zhang Zhanhui from the Zhongguancun Inspection Office. This is Director Li Yan from the Copyright Association. I want you to come here because the Copyright Association has received complaints from six companies, including Penguin, NetEase, Sohu, and Sina, that Lingxi Browser reprinted their articles without permission, with a total of over 60 million clicks. What do you say?"
Zhang Zhanhui's face was stern and he asked in a deep voice.
"Captain Zhang, Director Li, Lingxi Browser is just a technical platform. It extracts summaries through crawlers and finally jumps back to the original website of the news. This falls under the safe harbor principle of Article 23 of the Regulations on the Protection of Information Network Dissemination Rights and does not count as infringement."
Zhang Yiming replied calmly.
"But according to technical identification, Lingxi's server cached a large amount of full text of information, such as the article "PM2.5 Governance Controversy" in the Yanjing Evening News. Others invested a lot of manpower and material resources to collect and write news, but you just took it and used it. What's the difference between this and stealing?"
Zhang Zhanhui snorted coldly.
A flash of embarrassment passed across Zhang Yiming's face. He knew that it was not fair to do so, but ByteDance had no money and no resources. If it wanted to develop rapidly, it had to take a wild approach. Which famous entrepreneur had become successful by following the rules?
He leaned forward slightly and said sincerely, "Technically, we only store temporary caches for 72 hours, which complies with Article 5 of the Administrative Protection Measures for Internet Copyright."
Zhang Zhanhui smiled. He didn't expect that the other party was so well prepared. It was obvious that Zhang Yiming had already understood the regulations and policies before crawling the news content from various sources.
Li Yan from the Copyright Association raised his eyelids and said, "Lingxi earned 800,000 yuan in March and April by using infringing content and advertising revenue. This is a huge amount of illegal income. The minimum sentence is three years and the maximum is seven years. Do you understand?"
To put it bluntly, if Lingxi's behavior is defined as ordinary infringement, then things will be much simpler. All it needs to do is delete all the infringing content, apologize to Penguin and other complaining parties, and finally pay a fine.
But Li Yan's words clearly intended to classify Lingxi into the category of "intentional infringement for profit-making purposes".
Just as he said, once the nature changes, the responsibility also changes.
Zhang Yiming panicked and said hastily, "You two are right. I will strengthen the review mechanism when I get back and delete all the infringing content immediately to prevent this from happening again."
"Go back? You can't go back!" Zhang Zhanhui replied indifferently.
Can’t go back?
What does that mean? Zhang Yiming's head was buzzing. He opened his mouth, but was so nervous that no sound came out.
Zhang Zhanhui and Li Yan looked at each other and left the interrogation room, leaving Zhang Yiming in the room.
If Penguin and the three major portals had not filed a joint complaint, the Copyright Association would not have handled the case alone.
There are countless small players like ByteDance in China. Not to mention that they can’t manage them, even if Penguin were to sue them, they still wouldn’t be able to do so.
Usually, it is during the launch of the "Sword Net Operation" that a unified approach is taken to address online copyright infringements.
"Penguin really wants to send people in?"
After walking out of the inquiry room, Zhang Zhanhui frowned slightly and asked.
"Lock him up for a day to teach him a lesson. Otherwise, everyone will follow suit and I'll be busy to death." Li Yan raised his eyebrows and said nonchalantly.
Byte's legal officer stayed at the inspection office until eight o'clock in the evening, but he still couldn't get the result. He asked the inspector, "When will Mr. Zhang be able to come out?"
"It's hard to say. It depends on the nature of the case." the inspector replied.
The legal department knows that different characterizations will result in different punishments, ranging from one day to five or six years.
He couldn't help but sigh that his boss had such bad luck. The product was targeted by a giant like Penguin just a few days after it was launched.
Half an hour later, he returned to the company headquarters with a gloomy look on his face.
A group of technical, operational and marketing department heads immediately gathered around and asked, "How is the boss?"
"How did you know?" The legal officer looked surprised and asked subconsciously.
You know, the fact that he and Zhang Yiming went to the inspection office to cooperate with the investigation was not made public.
“It’s all out on the internet!”
"There are so many products that crawl other websites, why bother with us?"
"Mr. Zhang didn't come back? This is troublesome! Will he have to stay in prison for a few years?"
When everyone didn't see Zhang Yiming, they suddenly felt that something serious had happened. Everyone became uneasy, and the head of the technical department turned pale, fearing that he would be implicated.
Some things are worth less than four ounces if they are not weighed, and they cannot be weighed even a thousand pounds if they are weighed.
A complaint from a small website has completely different effects from reports from six large companies including Penguin, NetEase, and Sohu.
If the higher-ups wanted to make Lingxi's infringement an example, not only would Zhang Yiming be in trouble, but they would be in trouble too.
For a time, people at ByteDance were in panic.
Chen Yansen, who was far away in Xucheng, forgot about Zhang Yiming's matter after he finished talking to Liu Zhiping on the phone.
The next morning.
At the Zhongguancun Inspection Office, Zhang Yiming, who was feeling sleepy and tired, couldn't understand why Lingxi Browser, which had just reached 1 million users and less than 300,000 daily active users, had attracted the attention of major portals.
At the same time, he also realized a truth.
The equity given to investors is too dispersed, resulting in ByteDance not having a strong backing. If it encounters any trouble, there is no big boss behind it to support it.
At this moment, Zhang Yiming felt a little regretful that he should have sold all of his 25% stake in the seed round to Senlian Capital.
At the very least, Chen Yansen will be more proactive in rescuing people because they are both shareholders of ByteDance.
It was the first day of the May Day holiday, but Zhang Yiming stayed in the inspection station until three o'clock in the afternoon, exactly 24 hours, before he finally walked out of the inspection station door.
"Delete the offending content as soon as possible, apologize to the infringed party, and pay the fine. If you do it again, you will be severely punished."
Zhang Yiming recalled Li Yan's warning and couldn't help but groan inwardly.
More than half of the 5 million seed round funds had already been spent, and the remaining money was not enough to get authorization from any website.
The afternoon sun in Yanjing makes people dizzy.
Zhang Yiming had just walked to the gate when he suddenly saw a familiar face. The other person was tall and round, blocking the glaring light of twenty centimeters, and looking at him with a smile.
"Mr. Zhang, I'm sorry, I'm late." Gao Weilin said with a warm smile.
"Mr. Gao, why are you here?" Zhang Yiming was shocked and asked curiously.
"Last night, the boss called Mr. Liu from Penguin, Mr. Ding from NetEase, Mr. Zhang from Sohu and others until the early morning before they successfully mediated for you." Gao Weilin wiped the non-existent sweat from his forehead, paused and said, "Mr. Chen has used up a lot of favors for you."
Zhang Yiming's heart warmed, his eyes reddened, and he almost sobbed, but he finally held it back, forcing out a smile, and said gratefully: "Thank you, Mr. Chen, and thank you, Mr. Gao."
He knew that Gao Weilin must have flown to Yanjing overnight.
"Why bother you?" Gao Weilin shook his head.
Zhang Yiming smiled bitterly, he understood what Gao Weilin meant.
The original plan that Senlian Capital communicated to him was that Senlian Capital would invest 30 million yuan and hold 80% of the shares; he would invest 3 million yuan and use technology and manpower to invest, holding 20% of the shares.
But after leaving Hangzhou and returning to Yanjing, Zhang Yiming regretted it. He was reluctant to give up his controlling rights, but was also worried that Senlian Capital's high shareholding would threaten his voice. So he brought in three other angel investors and completed ByteDance's seed round together with Senlian Capital.
The goal has been achieved, but Senlian Capital's support for Lingxi Browser is also extremely limited.
On the contrary, Liang Bo, who resigned and joined Today Technology, started a month later than him, but the number of users of his products has already reached tens of millions.
In terms of content, it has obtained authorization from platforms such as Penguin, Sohu, NetEase, Sina and Youku.
But you have to act like a thief, living in fear all day long.
At this moment, Zhang Yiming completely understood! No matter how big the steamed bun is, it is not as delicious as a piece of cake! He was fed up with the days without the support of the big boss.
He is well aware that if ByteDance is a subsidiary of Suncity Capital, companies such as Penguin, Sohu and NetEase would also consider carefully before filing a complaint.
"Mr. Gao, does Senlian have any plans to increase its stake in ByteDance?" Zhang Yiming looked at Gao Weilin expectantly.
"Of course, but there's no rush for investment. Let's go to the hotel first, take a shower, change clothes, and get rid of the bad luck."
Gao Weilin waved his hand, indicating that he had also prepared pomelo leaves for Zhang Yiming.
There's nothing he can do about it. He's from Hong Kong Island and he believes in these things more.
Zhang Yiming was deeply moved. He put his arm around Gao Weilin's shoulders and said, "Boss Gao, I didn't think it through before. If I have offended you, please forgive me. I will apologize to you in Jingzhao Yin tonight."
"Hey, stay away from me. You smell bad."
Gao Weilin joked with a smile.
"Hahaha, it seems there is some smell." Zhang Yiming stayed in the inspection office for a day, and his personality became more and more stable, with a bit of the meaning of enlightenment in Longchang.
The two went to the hotel first. Zhang Yiming quickly washed up, changed into clean clothes, and then immediately rushed back to ByteDance headquarters.
If I don't go back, all my employees might run away.
When Zhang Yiming appeared with Gao Weilin, the ByteDance members felt relieved and couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Upon learning that Senlian Capital would step in to help Lingxi solve its copyright problems and planned to invest an additional 20 million, everyone cheered and smiled.
Zhang Yiming looked around and took in the reactions of his subordinates. He couldn't help but sigh: Did I really do something wrong before?
(End of this chapter)
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