From divergence to convergence: Institutionalization of copyright and the decline of online video piracy in China

Abstract

Since its emergence in 2005, China’s online video industry has been embroiled in rampant piracy. Nevertheless, online video piracy has sharply declined in recent years, and copyrights have become a widely accepted and practiced legal norm. With reference to historical institutionalism, this article considers copyrights as an institution and embeds the decline of China’s online video piracy in institutional changes of three copyright-related institutions: legal regimes, administrative regulations, and the online video industry. It argues that even though intervention by legal regimes cannot simply be overlooked, an interest-led institutional change in which the industry first diverges and then converges with administrative regulations is pivotal to the institutionalization of online video copyrights. These findings further our understanding of how China’s online video piracy is sustained or undermined with a holistic, historical, and dialectical outlook.