ABSTRACT
The staple of audio-visual content available in formal markets in China has long been characterised by heavy-handed government intervention. Until the mid-1990s, broadcast media were defined as public institutions (shiye) by the Chinese government; their content innovation was relatively stagnant and distribution geographically constrained under state control. Many approaches to China’s media have focused on the regulatory architecture that governs China’s media and frequently hinders it from being competitive (Zhao, 1998, 2008; Lynch, 1999; Lee, 2000; Donald and Keane, 2002; Brady, 2008; Zhu and Berry, 2009). In the context of restrictive censorship, strict import quotas and a weak domestic content industry with dominant players backed by the state, the unauthorised circulation of audio-visual content has played a crucial role in the broadening media diet of Chinese viewers. Meanwhile, counterproductive pricing strategies (Yar, 2005; Karaganis, 2011) have further pushed viewers towards informal media circulation. In terms of legal institutions, although China has brought its intellectual property laws generally to comply with its commitments under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Measures on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), enforcement remains problematic (Massey, 2006; Mercurio, 2012; Pang, 2006). Consequently, from peripatetic street vendors to backrooms of legitimate video stores, the informal media economy has grown vibrantly to feed viewers who have long regarded copyright as a public or common good (Lu and Weber, 2008; Pang, 2012). As Wang (2003) points out, these informal market players ‘operate through and around formal institutions such as the state, its regulatory and enforcement capacities, and its sovereignty’ (pp. 74–75).
