Telescope’s copyright image a storm in a black hole?

On the evening of 10 April (Beijing time), the US, China and several other territories and jurisdictions co-ordinated a global press conference. At that conference, the “Event Horizon Telescope” project, which was collaborated on by multinational researchers, released the first “black hole image” that humans had successfully captured in history.

Subsequently, a domestic image copyright company (Company A) watermarked the “black hole image” and thus triggered a hot discussion on the copyright of the image. This article will discuss the administrative supervision related to the copyright storm of the “black hole image” and the reaction of the capital market.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE INCIDENT

On the day of releasing “black hole image”, Company A immediately put “black hole image” in the picture contents of its website and indicated that, “If this picture is to be used for commercial purposes, please call or consult our customer representative”.

This move caused a heated public discussion about the copyright and use of the “black hole image”, and the business model of Company A. The next day, Tianjin Internet Information Office (Tianjin Netcom Office), the regulatory department at the place where the company’s website operating entity is located, interviewed a relevant person in charge and ordered Company A to rectify the website, and temporarily closed the website during that period.

On 12 April, Company A issued an “Announcement on suspension of service of the company’s website”. Then, on 17 April, Company A issued a “Notice of abnormal fluctuations in stock trading”, which announced and explained the abnormal fluctuations in trading caused by the company’s website rectification. On 18 April, Tianjin Netcom Office imposed administrative penalties on the operating entity of the website.

Tianjin Netcom Office filed an investigation on this incident, and decided that the operating entity failed to perform its security management obligations, or to promptly discover and dispose of the contents published by users, which are prohibited by laws and administrative regulations from publishing or distribution, in the process of engaging in internet information services through operation of the website.

The above-mentioned behaviour violated the provisions of article 47 of the Cyber Security Law, and should result in the imposition of an administrative fine of RMB300,000 (US$43,360).

Although the reason why the Tianjin Netcom Office imposed penalties on the operating entity of the website was that the website failed to fulfil management obligations on the information published by users, the main dispute in this incident is whether Company A enjoys copyright of the pictures on the website, or has obtained authorization of the copyright holders, and whether Company A has the right to provide such pictures to others for use and charge fees.

Therefore, one of the key points of the company’s website rectification will be to review the copyright of various content on the website, and ensure that it has fulfilled its reasonable information management obligations. It is probable that a large number of copyright-unclear content will be removed after the rectification is completed.