Behind the 260 million yuan fine: How did Qvod become a rogue platform?

It seems impossible for Qvod to be reborn. It was once the best video player in China with the largest number of users, but it could not be so big that it could not fail. It missed all the opportunities for transformation.

There was no sign of the closure of Qvod. On April 22, a large number of police entered Qvod's headquarters in Shenzhen and sealed off all computers. This scene was quickly spread on Weibo , and many people had to accept an unbelievable fact - Qvod was really coming to an end. Before this day, Qvod was one of the largest video-on-demand tools in China. Even with the threats of QQ Video and Baofeng Video, it still controlled 80% of the web video-on-demand market with its unique p2p technology and supported tens of thousands of individual webmasters. But in an instant, it became a rogue software. A month later, Qvod was ordered to pay a fine of 260 million yuan. A star enterprise fell down with only the pressure of a piece of paper.

It was once the best video player software in China, bar none.

In 2003, Wang Xin was only 23 years old. He lived in a rented house in Shanghai and was a member of the "Shanda Box" R&D team. This project, which consumed a lot of Chen Tianqiao's energy, ultimately did not gain any success in the market. Wang Xin decided to find another place to go. Like other young people with technical skills, he embarked on the road of entrepreneurship. Wang Xin founded two companies successively, both of which were well-known in the industry. However, the company's business achievements were not commensurate with its fame. In mid-2007, Wang Xin founded his third company in Shenzhen. There were three partners who also came from the "Shanda Box" project. Several people were very confident in their technical capabilities and decided to name their video player software QVOD as "Quick Play" in Chinese. This name contains their expectations for the product - when bandwidth restrictions make many video software fall into the obstacle of playback speed, "Quick Play" can break the bottleneck. It is not only the fastest, but also supports the playback of high-definition movies and TV.

After the player was completed, Wang Xin put it on the company's forum, hoping that someone would come and download it. He was convinced that his player technology was the best in the country, and that good wine would sell itself. On the other hand, several of his partners, including himself, were technical professionals and not good at promotion and publicity, so they had to pin their hopes on word of mouth from users. This forced promotion method had an unexpected effect. Cheng Tianshu, a marketing manager who was once in charge of promotion at Qvod, recalled that he joined the company at the end of 2007. At that time, the company had less than 20 employees in total. Before seeing the recruitment notice, he had no idea what Qvod was. "Before I went for the interview, I asked some friends what Qvod was, and found that everyone I knew had the software installed on their computer. That's when I realized that I wasn't going to a shell company."

Qvod's popularity is due to its p2p technology. This technology may not seem like a big deal now, but at the time, Qvod's use of it was unique. Simply put, the biggest contribution of p2p technology is that it makes it easier to download movies and games. While users are watching movies online, they are also quietly downloaded to their hard drives. This pleasing feature makes many users feel satisfied. Cheng Tianshu is also confident that Qvod will become the technical benchmark for domestic video players: "At that time, we often joked that if we were more low-key, we would be one of the best video players in the country, but deep down, everyone felt that the word 'one of' could be removed."

All technical bottlenecks seem to have been solved on Qvod. After continuous improvements, users can directly use Qvod to play BT and Xunlei seed files. Click to play, and after a short buffering time, the high-definition movie appears on the screen. These user experiences are what Wang Xin wanted to achieve from the beginning of production. When various video websites became more and more popular, he also decided to add the function of video editing to his player. The fool-style editor is undoubtedly the most popular. Pulling the progress bar, cutting your favorite clips, and making a collection or an MV of the movie screen are already commonplace for today's users, but Qvod made many people realize their "director dream" in 2008.

At the beginning of 2008, Wang Xin promised his 10-plus employees that if the number of users per day could reach 5 million by the end of the year, he would take them out to sea. As a result, he fulfilled his promise on a yacht in May. At the end of the year, because the number of users per day exceeded 15 million, he rented a yacht again. Cheng Tianshu also believes that his marketing work at that time did not encounter too many obstacles: "Because we have a large market share, all advertisers are willing to cooperate. Online video players have their own inherent advantages in advertising. If it is a local video player, users will hate inserting ads in the middle. But online videos have a buffer time, and users can accept ads during this time." In 2009, Cheng Tianshu and other employees took two more yacht rides because the company signed several orders worth tens of millions of ads. He said that at that time, every employee was full of confidence in the future and felt that the company would be listed in the United States. No one could have imagined that five years later, it would become the target of policy liquidation.

From the day it went online, Qvod has the nature of infringing on the copyright of film and television works.

"Now I don't know if it was luck," Zhou Yuan said. He is one of the copycat mobile phone makers in Shenzhen Huaqiangbei. He is now making various low-end Android phones. In 2008, he was still struggling to figure out how to compete with Nokia 's low-end phones that cost only a few hundred yuan. Zhou Yuan rented an office for his company at the time, which happened to be located above the Qvod office. He soon noticed that the player he used most often when watching movies online actually came from downstairs. "I talked to Wang Xin six times and expressed my intention to invest. The price increased from 3 million yuan to 8 million yuan, but he refused every time," Zhou Yuan said.

Zhou Yuan was not the only investor who was rejected. Cheng Tianshu believed that at that time, Kuaibo had already received several angel funds, which were enough to cover daily expenses. In addition, there were several venture capital companies in the office building where Kuaibo was located. Wang Xin declined all of them because Kuaibo was not short of money. "The reasons for rejecting venture capital are similar to those of other companies. We also think that venture capital will bring operational pressure. Investors are short-sighted. To cater to them, we have to do many things that undermine user experience. In fact, we can make money in the market, but the time will be a little later than the venture capital expects. No one worried about money at that time." But now it seems that rejecting venture capital may be the beginning of Kuaibo's decline. Cheng Tianshu often wonders, if Kuaibo had accepted venture capital, what would Kuaibo be like today? "At least it won't be closed down. Venture capital is more sensitive to national policies. They will tell you what you can do and what you can't do."

Rejecting venture capital is not a direct flaw. Another more important fatal factor of Qvod is that it has the nature of infringing the copyright of film and television works since the day it went online. Other video playback software and platforms have similar problems, but Qvod is the most prominent. Tudou and Youku have both encountered copyright lawsuits, but on their platforms, at least some of the videos have obtained legal copyrights, while Qvod does not have its own platform. It is just a simple player and cannot confirm whether the videos it plays are legal.

From 2008 to 2014, the number of movie websites in China remained around 10,000. Most of them were run by individual webmasters. As long as they had a server with sufficient bandwidth and capacity, they could earn income from traffic fees and advertising fees by putting movies on it. Almost all the movies and TV shows on these websites have not purchased copyrights, and they are gray websites that cannot be put on the table. However, they are precisely the largest user group of Qvod. When discussing investment, Zhou Yuan once asked Wang Xin about the risks involved. Wang Xin's answer to him was that since the country did not explicitly prohibit it, it was allowed. In fact, Wang Xin has been vigorously promoting Qvod to individual webmasters. Not only that, he also opened up Qvod's core technology to the outside world, hoping that other players' developers could use his technology. Zhou Yuan believes that Wang Xin's idea is easy to understand. Only when more people participate can the market pie become bigger and bigger. "This idea is not wrong. At that time, almost all video websites had pirated content and soft pornography. Everyone played a marginal ball. Wang Xin's problem was that he walked ahead of others and went too far. Later, it was difficult to transform."

After Wang Xin was arrested, Cheng Tianshu wanted to visit him but was rejected by the Public Security Bureau. In his opinion, Qvod is still an excellent tool. It fell only because its user base was too large. In the Internet Cleaning Operation, the relevant departments needed to kill it as a warning to others. But on the other hand, Qvod did have the opportunity to transform, but missed it.

The products that Lei Jun and Jack Ma are making now were already made by Wang Xin a few years ago. Unfortunately, QB did not seize the opportunity for transformation.

"In 2009, we made a set-top box that can directly transmit high-definition movies on the Internet to the TV. This thing is now the Xiaomi Box, LeTV Box, and Ali Magic Box. The products that Lei Jun and Jack Ma are making now were made by Wang Xin a few years ago." Cheng Tianshu recalled that the Qvod box was once going to be put into mass production. For this reason, Wang Xin also took the product to Shanghai and set up stages in several communities for display. People who have experienced it are very optimistic about this product. However, due to the previous experience of Shanda Box and the reluctance of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to allow private companies to enter the field of set-top boxes, Wang Xin finally reluctantly gave up the idea of ​​showing off his skills on the box. Looking back on this scene now, it is like a meaningful tragedy. Wang Xin foresaw the development trend of technology and the trend of people's lifestyle changes. Unfortunately, he foresaw it too early and made a product that could not see the light of day when the time was not ripe. In this respect, he is very similar to his former boss Chen Tianqiao, but he is not Chen Tianqiao after all. Unlike the latter, he does not have the resources and confidence to revive the country. He can only go all the way on the video road.

After the box plan came to an end, the worse situation emerged. Sohu and Tencent joined the video melee one after another. Copyright, a long-ignored legal term, suddenly received attention. Big websites began to spend a lot of money to purchase the copyright of film and television works. At the same time, the popularity of American dramas rose, and users gradually developed the habit of watching American dramas on legal websites. The growth of the number of users of Qvod began to stagnate. For Qvod, the bad news is not over yet. The popularity of British dramas soon rose again. People can watch "Sherlock Holmes" on Tudou, and the resources on personal websites have become dispensable. In 2012, high definition became another technical indicator of online film and television. With the increasingly better bandwidth conditions and cheaper computers, netizens can tolerate downloading a 1080p movie in a few hours. No matter how good Qvod's technology is, it is unable to buffer a high-definition movie with a capacity of 10G. Its former advantages have been greatly weakened. Cheng Tianshu said: "Another impact is online live streaming. For example, for some Hong Kong dramas, you can watch the live broadcast of Jade Channel directly on the Internet. Why do you still need Qvod?" In order to maintain market share, Wang Xin began to take risks. He put some pornographic videos directly on Qvod's server for users to watch.

Strictly speaking, Wang Xin did not directly provide pornographic videos. These contents were originally on his personal website. He put them on Qvod's server only to save buffering time and save users from waiting. Wang Xin explained this behavior as "the website provides content, Qvod provides technology". In his opinion, Qvod itself is still clean. Cheng Tianshu realized the hidden dangers. After persuading Wang Xin to no avail, he decided to resign in April 2013. A year after his resignation, Qvod was closed down and Wang Xin was arrested and imprisoned.

"Actually, every software that has something to do with videos will touch on pornographic content to some extent." Cheng Tianshu said that among those who use Xunlei, a considerable number of them use it to download pornographic content. The reason why Xunlei survived is that it is no longer a simple video download tool, but a comprehensive software that integrates games and various small applications. "It doesn't look as eye-catching as Qvod, and it has also made corrections. Now you can no longer use it to download pornographic videos." Qvod is not so lucky. In the face of huge fines, this "rogue software" has lost the opportunity to turn over. It is still alive, but it no longer has the video-on-demand function and has completely become a local playback software. Cheng Tianshu still insists that the tragedy of Qvod is not that it involves pornography and infringes on copyright, but that its genius founder lacks background and is unable to seize the best transformation opportunity. It was once the best online video-on-demand software in China, bar none.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.