{"id":18,"date":"2005-12-19T00:21:14","date_gmt":"2005-12-19T04:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/2005\/12\/19\/exclusive-interview-with-jun-wu-r2gs-"},"modified":"2006-05-15T00:36:37","modified_gmt":"2006-05-15T04:36:37","slug":"exclusive-interview-with-jun-wu-r2gs-president-and-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/2005\/12\/19\/exclusive-interview-with-jun-wu-r2gs-president-and-ceo\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive Interview with Jun Wu, R2G’s President and CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The following is an exclusive interview I had on 12\/06\/05 and 12\/07\/05 via e-mail with Mr. Jun Wu, President and CEO of R2G<\/a>. R2G is a relatively new Chinese company that is in the forefront of piracy prevention in China. Most recently, R2G has through legal action successfully compelled major websites Baidu.com, the9.com, and 21cn.com to remove their links to unauthorized music content.<\/p>\n

\n

CHEN<\/span>: How does R2G plan to reduce the impact of rogue BT
\nwebsites, rogue P2P file sharing software, and FTP servers that do not
\ndistinguish between legal and illegal copies of songs?<\/p>\n

WU<\/span>: We will track each individual BT or P2P site down to
\nmake sure that they do not distribute content that had registered with us.
\nAccording to the new Internet copyright bill that was introduced by the Chinese
\ngovernment earlier this year, once we have notified these sites with the list
\nof illegal content, they will have to delist these content immediately. Our
\ntracking software is developed in house, and specific to each individual site.
\nIt will be difficult for me to go into details one by one in an email.<\/p>\n

CHEN<\/span>: When a typical user is presented with a legit and
\nillegal venue, what will R2G offer to persuade him to pay more money for the
\nsame song\/movie? We’ve seen from the US that suing individuals for copyright
\ninfringement alone isn’t an effective deterrent. Of course, offering a legal
\nvenue will attract some users, but as long as a cheaper venue is available, how
\ndoes R2G plan to drastically convert users to legit methods?<\/p>\n

WU<\/span>: Our strategy is to focus on the service provider, be it
\na search engine or a P2P service provider\uff0c<\/span> making sure that it will be
\nincreasingly difficult for an average consumer to be able to find illegal
\nvenues to download pirated content. We believe that if we are able to cut the
\ncurrent piracy rate from 95% to 50% (a ten fold improvement), it is more than
\nsignificant enough to make a big impact on the overall market.<\/p>\n

CHEN<\/span>: I understand that R2G has experienced success in
\nconvincing large websites to de-list links to illegally distributed music. How
\nsuccessful has R2G been in convincing smaller websites to become legitimate
\ndistributors? What are the differences in strategy when dealing with smaller
\nwebsites, as opposed to larger sites?
\n\u00a0
\nWU<\/span>: Even though we had not been focusing on the smaller sites very much,
\ngenerally we feel they are relatively easy to handle. Our experience so far had
\nbeen that the medium sized websites are the most difficult ones to deal with.
\nThe logic is quite simple. In converting ones website from pirating to legit,
\nthere is always this issue of timing. So these medium sized sites are always
\nafraid that they will loose traffic during the process of turning legit,
\ntherefore loosing the possibility of ever competing against the big ones.<\/p>\n

CHEN<\/span>: Regarding P2P file-sharing, how does R2G plan to track and curb P2P
\nfile-sharing? Are there any estimated percentage breakdowns of where a typical
\nChinese person gets his music, movies, and other digital entertainment? (Legal
\nphysical copies, legal online downloads, illegal websites, illegal P2P, illegal
\nphysical sales, etc) Does R2G have any plans to turn P2P into a profitable mode
\nof file distribution?<\/p>\n

WU<\/span>: Yes, we are indeed working on the P2Ps as well. We hope to bring some good
\nnews to the market around the Chinese New Year. The plan is to install a layer
\nof filtering function with our P2P partners so that R2G registered content may
\nnot be pirated in amongst these P2P site\/communities. The first batch of these
\nP2P sites all has a centralized server. We are working on ways to offer similar
\nfunctions for the Freenet like P2P community.\u00a0 We believe that once one
\ncan control what can be distributed amongst a P2P network, then there are many
\nways to turn this into a profitable business. However, I don’t have any info
\nregarding the distribution at hand. My estimate will be, most of the younger
\ngeneration download their music from the Internet either through a search
\nengine or a P2P site. <\/p>\n

CHEN<\/span>: What demographics do the Chinese entertainment industry view as its
\ngreatest asset and liability? What actions are entertainment companies taking
\nto maximize revenues from these assets and limit losses from the liabilities?<\/p>\n

WU<\/span>: The young generation (15-35) is clearly the main market for entertainment
\ncontent (especially in the case of digital distribution). In a way, they are
\nboth asset and liability.\u00a0 If the collective service offering is
\nacceptable to this segment, then there is enormous potential, otherwise it is
\ngoing to be an uphill battle.<\/p>\n

CHEN<\/span>: How does R2G and the entertainment industry plan to
\nscale their business model to serve college students, who typically have less
\nexpendable income?<\/p>\n

WU<\/span>: Currently it is not on the top of our to-do list. Once
\nthe overall piracy rate in the public network is reduced to a certain level we
\nwill start addressing these niche market too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an exclusive interview I had on 12\/06\/05 and 12\/07\/05 via e-mail with Mr. Jun Wu, President and CEO of R2G. R2G is a relatively new Chinese company that is in the forefront of piracy prevention in China. Most recently, R2G has through legal action successfully compelled major websites Baidu.com, the9.com, and 21cn.com […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":248,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,371,39,373],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-internet","category-music","category-piracy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dmablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}