New entrants face wrath of media old guard

Clashes between traditional and new media are set to intensify further in China with the established players looking to counter the unbridled growth of online news apps through a slew of measures, including legal action.

The latest offensive in the standoff between the old and new guard surfaced during the weekend, when several leading portals and media giants asked Toutiao.com, an online reading app, to stop unauthorized news links, reproductions and forwards.

The news came close on the heels of Toutiao's announcement on Wednesday that it had won a third round of financing of $100 million, which boosted its market value to an estimated $500 million.

An earlier report from Beijing Times had said that five media giants, including Tencent and Sohu.com, had filed complaints and urged Toutiao to pull the news links. But Zhang Yiming, chief executive officer of Toutiao.com told China Daily on Monday that only four companies, barring Sohu.com, have asked the company to pull the links.

"The report about Sohu was a 'misquote'," said Zhang adding that, "the cooperation between us has been lasting and harmonious."

"We signed an agreement with the Tencent department responsible for mobile Internet news last August," said Zhang, indicating that they had the legal rights to repost news links.

On the other hand, Tencent insists that have not formalized any working relationship with Toutiao.

"We have never signed any such agreement," said Bai Weilin, a spokesman from Tencent's network media division.

Even as charges are being traded between the warring parties, Guangzhou Daily is the only affected party that has sought legal redressing over copyright infringements.

Toutiao, however, has denied all these charge, and said, "we respect all the media requests that have asked us to disconnect improper Web links."

"Strictly speaking, the services that we are providing are just a collation of news links, and we don't plagiarize any content," said Zhang. "We're playing the same role that Baidu does."

Baidu is China's largest online search engine.

Zhang stressed that most of Toutiao's news links will guide readers to the original website with copyright ownership.

"Our intention is not to avoid any copyright payments," he said adding that efforts will be made to enhance communication with more content providers to resolve impasses, if any.

"The incident is more like the conflict between the print media and the Internet new media," said Zhang.

"To me, it looks like a case of unfair competition," said Wang Qian, a professor at the intellectual property school of the East China University of Political Science and Law.

"The Toutiao links direct users to original websites. But the news links in the apps block the original page commercials, which to a certain extent, damages the interests of the original news providers."

Zhang Hongbo, director-general of the China Written Works Copyright Society, however, says that the new media should increase their self-discipline in matters related to copyrights and enterprise social responsibility. At the same time, the traditional media should strive for compromise, rather than conflict, and seek a balanced approach, he said.

Toutiao.com was established in August 2012 and has grown a user-base of 120 million in less than two years.