Recently, the popular Chinese live-streamer PDD complained during a stream, saying he was just sued for 100K CNY, roughly equal to 15K USD. Stating that the reason for the lawsuit is that he sang a song in 2019 that he was not authorized to sing.
The song he sang is Xiang Tian Zai Jie Wu Bai Nian (meaning “Borrow 500 More Years from the Heaven”), the opening theme of the TV drama Kangxi Dynasty and a widespread song in China. Zhang Hongguang, the composer of the song, was the one who sued PDD.
There were other cases the streamer or the live streaming platform has been sued for song authorizations. In 2019, the Douyu streaming platform was sued by the Music Copyright Society of China because their popular streamer Feng Timo sang an unauthorized song live. As a result, a 5200 CNY compensation was paid by Douyu.
PDD was frustrated by the lawsuit. In his recent stream, he showed a screenshot of conversations with Douyu personnel, and it seems they had asked him to stop singing live until it ends.
The screenshot of the conversations between Douyu personnel shows they are trying to avoid another similar incident.
After making an apology for his actions, he also tried to figure out why he specifically was the one who got the lawsuit when many others had done the same thing. Sometimes the singer or the song creator was happy about this; JJ Lin even paid a friendly visit to his Douyu stream when PDD sang JJ Lin's song. He joked it could be because he is terrible at singing and angered the composer. “In the future, I will only sing JJ Lin's song,” said PDD, “He will never sue me even if I sang horrifically.”
Source: Weibo