Chinese Online Video Portal Ku6 Strikes Deals With Major Hollywood Studios

Ku6 Media, which operates a popular online video portal in China, has reached content cooperation agreements with Sony Pictures Television and another undisclosed Hollywood studio.

The reason I think this is significant is because it makes Ku6 the first Chinese local video site to acquire legitimate copyright content from major studios.

The deals that were struck enable Ku6 to acquire the internet broadcasting rights in mainland China for several hundreds of Hollywood features and TV episodes.

As Ku6 CEO Kevin (Shanyou) Li quite straightforwardly puts it:

“That content will please our users and will enhance our brand as we build a major media platform to provide differentiated marketing services to our advertising partners.”

Ku6 claims it was the first Chinese video portal operator to delete pirated content posted by its users on its premier online brands, ku6.com and juchang.com, which it started doing in December 2009. The company also established the “International Film & TV Co-Acquisition Fund” with Sohu.com with an initial funding of $10 million.

So yes, there are online video companies in China that know things like intellectual property rights exist, and even manage to respect them.