Chapter 134 Accused of Plagiarism
"What's going on?" Su Yingxue's voice trembled almost imperceptibly as her fingers pounded the keyboard, the Enter key making a dull thud.
Manager Wang Datou practically smashed through the glass door and rushed in, his dark blue employee badge waving violently in front of his chest, beads of sweat trickling down his temples and into his collar: "President Su, something terrible has happened! The system has detected malicious code injection; it's a targeted attack on our software!"
He typed rapidly on the spare computer keyboard, and the detection report that popped up on the screen was so bright it hurt his eyes: "The final version of the video source has had its keyframes tampered with, and more than a dozen clips with 'concrete evidence of plagiarism' watermarks have been automatically generated and sent to the work emails of five industry big V's through a hidden port. Now it can't be taken back!"
Su Yingxue's heart felt as if it had been gripped by an icy hand, sinking to the bottom. Before she could even process the news, her phone on the table suddenly started vibrating wildly, the screen filled with message notifications, and the red numbers kept soaring.
In the screenshot sent by Zhang Yang, the spokesperson for Longwu Company, the official Weibo account of the competitor company "Gaoguang Advertising" had just updated a "pre-heating easter egg" three minutes earlier. In the video, the camera language, the original custom soundtrack, and even the narration script that Su Yingxue revised word by word, which their team had polished for several weeks, were all taken without any changes. Only three unimportant background scenes were hastily replaced, and even the parameters of the transition effects were surprisingly the same.
“It’s an intern.” Su Wan’s fingertip swiped through the crew’s WeChat group. The intern, Xiao Lin, who was in charge of organizing the shooting logs, had his profile picture turned gray; he had just left the group a few minutes ago. At the end of the chat history, there was still his last message before he deleted it, which was blatantly provocative: “Your film will never be released.”
Su Yingxue instantly understood the situation—the intern in charge of the daily backup of the shooting footage must have received benefits from the competitor, secretly recording the core footage in advance and helping them edit this "pseudo-original" scene.
Even more devastating news followed. The platform's operations team called directly, their voices filled with anxiety: "Su Yingxue, who have you offended? Nearly a thousand online troll accounts have filed a concentrated complaint, and the 'evidence' they've attached is all watermarked and altered footage. Right now, the platform can only freeze the online access privileges and initiate the copyright verification process!"
Su Yingxue opened the industry news app, and the PR articles from Gaoguang Media had already flooded the homepage. The headlines were so glaring that they felt like a slap in the face: "A certain company maliciously plagiarized the creative idea, and the final version of the promotional video was taken down by the platform for investigation. Where is the bottom line of the industry?" In the comments section, netizens who were unaware of the truth had already started to hurl insults, and even Longwu Hotpot, which had cooperated with them, sent a message to ask "whether the situation is true".
Wang Datou was still futilely trying to recover the original files, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead onto the keyboard, creating small water stains: "The other side is too professional. The code is custom-made, and they even exploited an unpatched vulnerability in our software, exactly like those targeted attacks in the news before." Su Yingxue walked to the window, pushed it open a crack, and a gust of cold wind made her shiver. In the office building diagonally opposite, the offices of Gaoguang Media were brightly lit, the lights on the entire floor particularly blatant in the late night, as if celebrating this long-planned victory in a grand manner.
The phone rang again. It was a planner from the team, her voice trembling with tears: "President Su, the big influencers have started releasing 'solid evidence,' saying we're 'industry thieves.' What do we do now?"
Su Yingxue looked at the photo on the screen of herself and her team members working late into the night revising the script, and took a deep breath. She opened the chat window with her lawyer and typed a line on the screen: "Prepare the materials and sue them for commercial defamation and unfair competition." The wind outside the window picked up, but in the office, her eyes slowly hardened—this sneak attack might be fierce, but it wasn't time to declare a verdict yet.
Meanwhile, in the office
"President Su! Their high-gloss advertising is amazing! What should we do?"
The office erupted in chaos. Xiao Lin slammed a folder on the table, scattering papers all over the floor. Receptionist Xiao Li, head bowed, twisted the hem of her clothes, her usually meticulously styled bangs now a mess plastered to her forehead. Planning Xiao Zhao, huddled in a corner clutching a cushion, mumbled, "My last company did the same thing. They used this tactic to kill off a lot of small companies..."
"Are our bonuses gone?" Mengmeng covered her face, her shoulders sobbing. "We finally got a few orders, will the company go bankrupt now?"
Su Yingxue stood in the center of the crowd, her phone screen still lit up, displaying an ultimatum from Longwu Advertising Company: "If you cannot prove your innocence within 24 hours, the cooperation will be terminated immediately and you will be held liable for breach of contract." Her temples throbbed, but she forced herself to take a deep breath and try to keep her voice steady: "Don't panic, we still have a chance."
She hurried towards her office, and as she passed the break room, she overheard people whispering: "I heard Gao Guang has a so-called 'first draft' this time, a month earlier than ours." "It's definitely fake, but who knows if the platform will believe it..."
Su Yingxue closed the door and immediately dialed the phone upstairs: "President Yan? Can you do us a favor?"
The elevator doors opened, and Yan Yixi was leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window of his office, holding a cold cup of coffee. Hearing hurried footsteps, he turned around and saw Su Yingxue rushing in, her face pale.
"President Yan, they said we plagiarized..." Su Yingxue's voice trembled slightly. She gripped her phone tightly, her knuckles turning white to almost transparent, and cold sweat from her palms soaked the edges of the phone case.
"Don't panic." Yan Yixi noticed Su Yingxue's flustered state and inquired about the situation. "Your company can't go bankrupt. We're counting on you for our meals!"
After making some inquiries, Yan Yixi immediately contacted her colleagues at the company. They had many programmers, and seeing their bright eyes, she eagerly sought their information.
"Technical issue? No problem. I was just thinking of working overtime!"
"Dare to do hacking? Haha, we were already hacking websites when we were in high school."
"No problem, Mr. Su. Remember to give me a few more chicken wings next time."
Supervisor He Yue chuckled and tapped several programmers on the head. "President Su, don't worry. We might not be good at other things, but when it comes to website software code, Qihang has absolutely no problem."
Chen Zhe, a colleague from the technical department, followed closely behind, his back hunched, the keyboard clattering loudly. Strands of hair clung to his sweat-dampened forehead, and the code on the screen scrolled like a waterfall, yet it couldn't dispel the red warning at the top of the screen: "The online troll report is still escalating; over 500 new complaints in 10 minutes. The platform says unless we can provide clear proof of original content with a timestamp, it can't be restored to online status within 24 hours, and it might even be permanently removed!"
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