Expert committee to examine plagiarism in mainland scripts

Liu Heping, standing vicechairman of the China Radio and Television Association’s TV- Series Scriptwriters Committee, announced recently that he will be joining an expert committee dedicated to examining plagiarism in the film and TV industries, news. lanjinger. com reported on Thursday.

According to Liu’s statement, the committee will be established on March 30.

The first of its kind in the Chinese mainland, the panel will consist of legal experts and film and TV industry insiders. Their main task will be to identify plagiarism among film and TV works and to protect the legal rights of intellectual property.

Script plagiarism has become a serious problem in China’s film and TV industry in recent years.

Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, a popular fantasy novel written by author Tang Qi that has beenbe adapted into both a TV dramadr and a film, brought attentionat to plagiarism recently afteraf author Da Feng accused TangTa of copying his novel Taohuazhai.Ta

While plagiarism has been a headacheh for the industry for yem years, identifying it has been a major challenge.

According to well- known scriptwriter Yu Fei, a script for a 50- 60 episode drama canc be more than several tens ofo millions of characters long, as such comparing two similar scriptssc can take several months to a year.

Additionally, without proper standards,st it is often difficult to identifyid plagiarism.

“A plagiarist can completely copyco your idea but not use a singlesin word from your work,” Yu said. “For example, the story plot can be reordered or follow a similar relationship between characters, while all their names have been changed and scenes altered.”