(Yicai Global) June 4 -- Long-form video platforms including iQiyi and Tencent will fight back against copyright infringement by increasingly popular short video platforms, their executives said at an industry forum today.

Short videos featuring clips from television programs and films infringe on copyright and diminish the artistic value of the original works, said Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Tencent Holdings and chief executive officer of Tencent’s Online Video Business Unit. Many short videos use vulgar content to attract viewers and have a bad effect on teenagers, he added.

But Li Liang, vice president of ByteDance, which operates short video platform TikTok, retorted on Sina Weibo that Tencent-backed WeChat Channels is the only short video platform that has not yet launched an “underage mode” as required.

IQiyi CEO Gong Yu said a lot of short videos are actually engaging in piracy. They just add some content of their own to copyrighted works to cover this up, he said. Youku VP Fan Luyuan also said tougher rules are needed for short videos.

“Some video creators simply cut and move copyrighted content, which not only causes losses for the copyright owners of long videos, but also squeezes the space for creators of original short videos,” Fan said. “To fight infringement is to encourage originality.”

China had 944 million online audiovisual users last year, and the market for short videos came top at CNY205.13 billion (USD32 billion), up 58 percent from 2019. The market for long videos was second at CNY119.03 billion, a 16 percent gain.

Short video platform Kuaishou’s average number of daily active users reached 379 million in the first quarter of this year, while for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, the number was 680 million. Tencent Video had 385 million monthly active users at the end of last June, while Youku had 381 million. IQiyi had 344 million.

Kuaishou’s [HKG:1024] market capitalization was HKD858.4 billion (USD110.6 billion) at the close of trading in Hong Kong today. IQiyi [NASDAQ:IQ], which is listed in New York, is worth just USD10.85 billion.

Editor: Tom Litting