The Crisis of Creative Theft and “Content Washing” in the Digital Age

A. Background and Objectives: Defining the Systemic Harm of “Content Washing”

In today’s rapidly evolving digital content economy, original content is viewed as a core asset driving both traffic and value. However, a practice known as “content washing”, more accurately termed contents cleaning, has emerged as a destructive force eroding the creative ecosystem. Unlike simple copying or traditional plagiarism, “content washing” is described as a “highly sophisticated act of plagiarism”, whose essence lies in stealing the original work’s core ideas, logical framework, or unique viewpoints, while altering the work’s surface expression to circumvent direct enforcement of existing copyright laws.

The prevalence of this behavior poses a systemic threat to the long-term health of the content industry. It leverages technology and legal grey areas to decouple the high investment required for quality content creation (time, intellect, and specialized knowledge) from the low-cost, high-efficiency mode of content production. This ultimately leads to a severe drop in the return on investment for original creators. This report aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the industrial mechanism and legal challenges of this grey infringement behavior from legal, economic, and historical perspectives, and to draw upon the historical experience of copyright protection in the music industry to propose solutions for dynamic balance in digital content intellectual property protection.

B. Introducing the Core Case: A Lawyer’s Encounter with Article “Rewriting”

The experience of a legal professional provides a vivid illustration of the core legal challenge posed by “content washing.” A lawyer friend authored a specialized legal analysis article, centered on a deep interpretation and original argumentative structure concerning complex legal issues. The article was subsequently “rewritten” and published by a self-media operator. The rewritten article retained the original core professional insights, key arguments, and conclusions, but substituted and adjusted the specific phrasing, paragraph order, and some specialized terms.

This case clearly reflects the typical characteristic of “content washing”: the target of infringement is the content’s intrinsic value—the Ideas and argumentative structure—rather than the extrinsic form—the Expression. Original authors invest substantial time and intellectual effort to develop such professional, unique argumentative structures. However, once the core ideas of the article are stolen and disseminated in a disguised form, the original author faces an extremely high legal threshold for defending their rights. The proliferation of this “advanced” form of infringement directly leads to a decline in creators’ willingness to defend their rights, as the cost of litigation and the risk of failure are disproportionately high, thus accelerating a vicious cycle of “bad money driving out good” in the content ecosystem.

II. Analysis of the “Content Washing” Industry Chain and its Structural Harm to Digital Marketing

A. The Industrialized Model of “Content Washing”: A Low-Cost, High-Efficiency Infringement Assembly Line

The phenomenon of “content washing” is no longer isolated individual behavior but has evolved into a clear, efficient industrialized operational model. This industry chain typically comprises three segments:

1. Upstream—Software Developers/Tool Vendors: Responsible for developing and selling “content washing” tools, such as pseudo-original software, some of which cost only 198 RMB annually, offering unlimited pseudo-original generation and detection services. When these tools are banned, they often reappear under a “new identity,” continually lowering the technical barrier to infringement.
2. Midstream—Low-Cost Writers/Re-publishers: Carry out the actual “content washing” based on downstream client requests. Writer compensation is low, for instance, 1 RMB for 100 characters, with high-demand drafts peaking at only 30 RMB for 1,000 characters.
3. Downstream—Batch Operation Studios/Companies: Operate dozens or even hundreds of self-media accounts, serving as the ultimate content publishers who profit from traffic and revenue generated by the “washed” articles. Successful operators can achieve monthly incomes of eighty to over a hundred thousand RMB, creating a powerful economic incentive.

This model uses traffic sharing and advertising revenue as its core drivers. Major platforms increasingly support original content with higher recommendation weights, exposure, and direct rewards. “Content washers” exploit loopholes in platform checks, using disguised originality to steal the rewards intended for original creators. A striking fact illustrates this: one original deep-dive article garnered 1.2 million views on one platform, but subsequent data analysis showed the article received a total of 5 million views across platforms, meaning up to 80% of the traffic and revenue was siphoned off and transferred by “content washers”.

B. Technical Concealment and Legal Evasion Strategies

The success of the “content washing” industry relies on technical concealment and clever legal evasion.

For graphic content, common methods include manual rewriting, altering paragraph order, and replacing an entire article’s vocabulary with synonyms. Specialized washing websites and “one-click pseudo-original” tools can generate a disguised draft in seconds. These tools often include originality detection features to ensure the generated manuscript passes preliminary platform checks.

In video and knowledge-based content, the methods are equally varied. Video “re-publishers” may re-record live streams from small-scale streamers (because they “won’t take these matters seriously”) , remove the audio, and add an intro/outro for repackaging. Alternatively, they may cut a TV series into short clips, rapidly profiting from the higher user stickiness and readership of video content compared to text (80% to 90% of viewers are likely to watch the second clip after the first). Knowledge-based courses are plagiarized by stealing celebrity photos, creating promotional posters, and “mash-up editing” the course content, often cutting out copyright statements.

Regardless of the form, the core strategy is to separate intellectual labor input from content monetization rights. This technically rich, low-cost “content washing” operation creates a massive imbalance with the original creators’ high intellectual investment and steep rights-defense costs. Economic incentive is the original sin: as long as the cost of infringement ($) is far lower than the cost of licensing ($$$), and the risk of litigation is close to zero, this industry chain will continue to expand, leading to the phenomenon of “spring winds blowing and growth recurring”.

C. Structural Harm to Self-Media and Digital Marketing

The harm caused by “content washing” has transcended the loss suffered by individual creators and is now eroding the entire digital content ecosystem and the structural foundation of digital marketing.

Deep, professional original content requires high investment in time and intellectual capital, but its output value is rapidly diluted by low-cost “content washing”. When high investment does not yield a reasonable return, creators gradually shift towards producing low-quality, easily mass-produced content, leading to a decline in the quality of the entire content pool.

From a digital marketing perspective, differentiated positioning is the core strategy for brands to break through in a fiercely competitive market . Professional content itself is a key element in building cognitive barriers and long-term competitive advantages. Differentiation not only helps brands avoid homogeneous competition but also establishes long-term advantages in consumers’ minds through a unique value proposition . However, when core viewpoints, deep analysis, or descriptions of unique functional attributes can be quickly and cheaply “washed,” the brand content loses its uniqueness and value barrier, resulting in severe content homogeneity in the market. This mechanism prevents digital marketing from transitioning to high-quality, high-barrier content, forcing content entrepreneurs back into the inefficient competition of relying on speed and quantity, thus stifling the development potential of new quality productive forces in the digital economy.

III. The Blind Spot of Legal Protection: The Dilemma of “Expression” Boundaries in Copyright Law

A. The Challenge of the Idea/Expression Dichotomy in the Chinese Context

The fundamental reason for the industrial proliferation of “content washing” lies in its precise exploitation of the structural fault line created by the core principle of modern copyright law: the Idea/Expression Dichotomy .

This principle dictates that copyright law protects only the author’s original “form of expression,” not the “ideas” or themes conveyed by that expression, as ideas belong to the public domain . The purpose of this system is to balance the protection of authors’ interests with the promotion of creative freedom for the public . However, “content washing” precisely utilizes this “soft spot”, by copying only the article’s most valuable core experiences or viewpoints (the idea level) while performing extensive substitutions in the textual descriptions and stylistic expressions (the expression level).

In literary or professional works, distinguishing between “idea” (public domain) and “expression” (exclusive part) is inherently a highly complex task. The constituent elements of a literary work, from abstract theme and main plot to specific unfolding plots and textual descriptions, form a system centered on the idea and wrapped by expression. For example, a work’s theme (such as “revenge”) is an abstract idea and cannot be monopolized. However, when a “content washer” steals the lawyer’s essay’s original argumentative structure and data organization method, even slightly different wording means that the core value of the intellectual labor has been stolen. Under the current legal framework, due to the minimal resemblance in expression, it is difficult for the law to effectively sanction this “advanced plagiarism”.

B. The Judicial Standard of “Substantive Similarity”: Complex Consideration of “Quality” and “Quantity”

Copyright infringement typically requires a judgment of “substantive similarity,” which concurrently considers both “quality” and “quantity”. First, the court must compare whether the original work’s original expressive parts are substantially reproduced in the alleged infringing work (i.e., similarity in “quality”). Second, based on the significance of the similar part within the original work, the court determines whether the subsequent work constitutes infringement (i.e., the degree of “quantity”).

The act of “content washing,” through pseudo-original software and manual rewriting, minimizes the overlap in “expression” between the alleged infringing work and the original, thus achieving the lowest level of “quantity”. Concurrently, the infringer can argue that the imitation is only of the work’s theme or generic main plot, which falls into the “idea” category of the public domain, thereby evading the determination of similarity in “quality”.

Analysis of the lawyer’s case indicates that to effectively combat “content washing,” the standard for determining “substantive similarity” must be adjusted. It is necessary to incorporate core experience, data structure, or unique logical arrangement (which are the result of high-intensity intellectual labor by professionals) into the protected scope of “expression,” or at least as key factors in judging the “quality” of the infringement.

C. Analysis of Typical Cases: Judicial Practice in Self-Media “Advanced Plagiarism”

Judicial practice further confirms the difficulty of defending rights. In 2016, China’s first publicly tried case concerning “advanced plagiarism”—the Huo Ju v. Chaping case—resulted in the court rejecting the plaintiff’s claim, finding insufficient basis for the assertion of copyright infringement. The significant warning from this judgment is that if the “washed” work only shares the idea or theme with the original, with little to no identical expression, it is highly challenging to establish infringement.

This precedent provides a legal grey endorsement for the “content washing” industry chain. It validates the feasibility of large-scale, industrialized theft by operating within the law’s grey areas. This is not merely a legal gap but a consequence of legal boundaries being precisely exploited. There is a massive structural fault line between the protection of “expression” under the current Copyright Law and the rapid content restructuring in the digital age.

IV. Historical Analogy and Enlightenment: The Crisis and Rebirth of Copyright Protection in the Music Industry

A. The Crisis of the Digital Piracy Era: The Revenue Cliff of the Global Music Industry

Copyright protection in the digital content industry is not the first to face a systemic crisis. In the late 1990s, with the rise of network dissemination technologies (such as P2P file sharing), the global music industry faced a devastating shock, grappling with severe challenges like “rampant piracy, shrinking revenue, and company bankruptcies”. This crisis is fundamentally similar to the current “content washing” crisis: technological advancement reduced content replication costs to near zero, leading to the collapse of the value distribution mechanism.

However, after a prolonged and painful industry restructuring, global music industry revenue has resumed growth, with recorded music income even approaching the industry peak before the piracy era. This recovery was not accidental but was driven by a dual engine of legal deterrence and business model innovation.

B. Transformation of Law and Business Model: The Dual Engine of Successful Recovery

1. Strengthening the Legal Engine: Reversing the Economics of Infringement

The key to the music industry’s recovery was the comprehensive use of legal means to fundamentally reverse the situation where the “cost of online infringement was lower than the cost of licensing”. In the judicial sphere, courts began frequently ruling on pre-trial injunctions and gradually increasing compensation standards, drastically escalating the economic risk of mass infringement. A tough stance was adopted against network service providers and practices attempting to profit from others’ copyrights. This high-pressure deterrence mechanism shifted infringement from a low-risk arbitrage model to a high-risk legal gamble, thereby dismantling the previous low-cost infringement economic model.

2. Business Model Innovation: The Rise of Streaming

Legal pressure bought time for business model innovation. The emergence of streaming services provided convenience, reasonable pricing, and a superior user experience, gaining increasing acceptance from both consumers and record companies. Today, streaming revenue accounts for nearly half of recorded music income. The success of this model, which transitioned consumers from illegal downloading to legal paid services, was crucial in curbing piracy. It proved that sustainable copyright protection is only achievable when legitimate services offer a better user experience than piracy at a reasonable price.

C. Lessons Learned: “Content Washing” Governance Requires Both High Legal Pressure and Innovative Business Models

Historical experience shows that system-wide infringement cannot be cured solely by technical detection or legal patches. The self-media and digital marketing sectors require simultaneous structural changes:

Firstly, legally, a high-pressure deterrence strategy similar to that in the music industry must be adopted against “content washing.” By raising the compensation ceiling for mass infringement and implementing punitive damages, mass infringers must face high economic costs, thereby breaking the existing “low-cost infringement” economic model.

Secondly, content platforms and creators must not solely rely on traffic sharing. Instead, they should learn from the success of streaming and establish business models based on subscription, knowledge payment, or brand content differentiation . This model links content value to the creator’s persona, unique services, or deep interaction, making it impossible for simple “content washing” to steal the core value. The music industry’s success was also rooted in industry cooperation and self-regulation. The self-media industry similarly needs to establish strong industry associations to jointly promote governance.

The table below summarizes the music industry’s experience in tackling the digital copyright crisis and offers guidance for the self-media industry:

Digital Copyright Crisis Response Strategy: Lessons from Music Industry for Self-Media

V. Dilemmas and Solutions for Digital Content Intellectual Property Protection

A. Limitations and Breakthroughs in Platform Governance

Content platforms are the first line of defense against “content washing,” but their effectiveness is limited by inherent commercial conflicts. On one hand, platforms need traffic; on the other hand, “content washing” activity often generates significant traffic and popularity. The “ambiguous attitude” of some platforms towards this grey traffic undermines their determination to crack down on infringement. Moreover, even when platforms intervene, the processing time is often too long (sometimes over a week), whereas internet content’s relevance typically fades within a few days.

Despite limitations, platforms are striving for breakthroughs. For instance, the WeChat Public Platform established an originality protection mechanism in 2015 and launched the “WeChat Public Platform Content Washing Complaint Review Rules” in 2018. This rule attempts to set up a collegiate review mechanism, submitting disputed “content washing” cases to a review panel for assessment, aiming for fairer conclusions. The future direction for breakthroughs lies in platforms strengthening their independent auditing capabilities and establishing more deterrent punishment mechanisms (such as permanent account deletion and recovery of all illegal profits) based on the review mechanism, rather than simple article removal.

B. Modernizing the Judicial System: Frontier Technology Empowering Rights Confirmation and Defense

The digital wave brings opportunities for traditional copyright protection through new technologies like AI and Blockchain, particularly in resolving the evidentiary challenges in content rights confirmation and defense .

1. Blockchain Technology: Building a Trusted Evidence and Ownership Verification System

Blockchain technology’s core advantage lies in its tamper-proof and traceable nature, offering an effective solution for “proof of original creation time” for digital content, significantly lowering the burden of proof for creators.

China’s practice in this area is advanced:

• Digital Copyright Chain (DCI System 3.0): The Digital Copyright Chain by the China Copyright Protection Center was selected as one of the top ten outstanding cases in the 2023 Blockchain Innovation Application Case solicitation. This system is based on blockchain technology and integrates standardized identifiers and metadata parsing . Its goal is to promote the secure and efficient allocation of data elements to address global digital technology challenges .
• Judicial Application—Beijing Internet Court’s “Tianping Chain”: The Beijing Internet Court established the “Tianping Chain” blockchain platform . Importantly, “Tianping Chain” is not merely a data storage platform but validates the interconnected nodes and stored evidence through an alliance chain . This mechanism streamlines case handling for judges, aiming to improve quality and efficiency, especially since copyright cases account for nearly 70% of the court’s caseload .

These applications demonstrate that using technology in the judicial process, rather than just for front-end storage, can enhance judicial efficiency and the cost of infringement, representing a fundamental shift from traditional paper-based evidence models.

2. AI Technology: Potential for Judicial Assistance and Infringement Comparison

Artificial intelligence technology holds significant potential for application in judicial and content review. The Beijing Internet Court has actively used AI in trials, such as developing its first-generation virtual judge . Litigants can provide text content, and the virtual judge uses intelligent recognition technology to offer targeted answers and immersive litigation guidance, assisting judges with a large volume of routine and repetitive work .

In infringement comparison, AI can develop more sophisticated “substantive similarity” comparison models. Such models can go beyond traditional keyword and phrase matching to analyze the article’s logical structure and argumentative depth, thereby more effectively identifying ” advanced content washing” and providing technical evidence for judges to determine “quality” similarity .

3. New Dilemmas Posed by AI-Generated Content

Despite new technologies aiding creation, the copyright ownership of AI-generated content remains a challenge . The mainstream view currently leans towards AI-generated content lacking human originality and therefore not being eligible for copyright protection . AI is viewed as an auxiliary tool for human creation, capable of providing creative inspiration and enhancing efficiency . However, AI can also serve as a powerful “content washing” tool, further lowering the technical barrier to infringement and complicating the legal determination of the “expression” boundary.

C. Promoting the Formation of a Copyright “Social Co-governance” Framework

To effectively govern the “content washing” chaos, it is essential to promote the formation of a social co-governance framework . This means no single entity (be it regulators, platforms, or courts) can solve the problem alone; it requires collaborative efforts among multiple stakeholders:

• Regulatory Authorities: Need to centralize the investigation and prosecution of illegal reprinting cases, and legally shut down illegal news websites and self-media accounts to achieve regulatory compliance.
• Content Platforms: Must strengthen mechanisms, actively crack down on infringement, and eliminate any ambiguity toward traffic derived from infringement.
• Judicial Institutions: Should establish clear rules through the trial of typical cases, achieving the most ideal effect for social governance .
• Technology Service Providers: Should offer standardized tools for rights confirmation and defense (such as the DCI system) .

The core principle is that content is the industry’s most vital part, and technology merely serves content . All stakeholders’ efforts must focus on ensuring high-quality original content receives its due reward, thereby incentivizing social innovation.

VI. Conclusion and Strategic Recommendations

A. Summary: Healthy Development of the Digital Creative Economy Requires Dynamic Balance in Copyright

“Content washing” is a typical outcome of intellectual property protection lagging behind technological change in the digital economy. Its prevalence stems from infringers’ precise exploitation of the Copyright Law’s “Idea/Expression Dichotomy” and the “low-risk/high-reward” economic model fostered by industrialized operation. As shown by the music industry’s path to copyright redemption, resolving this crisis requires both high legal deterrence and a strategic shift in business models. Only by dismantling the economic temptation of the infringement chain and leveraging emerging technologies to reshape the judicial evidence system can a foundation be laid for the healthy development of the digital creative economy.

B. Three-Dimensional Recommendations for Content Creators, Platforms, and Regulatory Agencies

1. For Regulatory and Judicial Systems (Strengthening Deterrence and Rights Confirmation)

• Amend Judicial Interpretations to Protect Structural Originality: Push for judicial interpretations of Copyright Law in the digital content sphere that incorporate core logical architecture, unique data arrangements, and complex relationship networks in professional articles as factors for determining “substantive similarity,” bringing them into the scope of “expression” protection.
• Increase Compensation Standards and Punitive Measures: Following the music industry’s example, significantly raise the amount of damages for infringement and implement punitive damages against large-scale, industrialized “content washing” to fundamentally reverse the economic model where infringement costs are lower than licensing costs.
• Promote Standardized Rights Confirmation Systems: Vigorously promote and integrate the use of blockchain technology in the judiciary (such as the DCI System 3.0 and “Tianping Chain”), providing creators with standardized, low-cost digital evidence storage and ownership verification services, thereby drastically lowering the cost and difficulty of litigation .

2. For Platforms and Technology Service Providers (Building Defenses and Fair Arbitration)

• Ensure Transparency and Enforce Strict Penalties: Platforms must make their review mechanisms and penalty standards transparent. They should implement rapid, permanent account bans and recovery of all illegal profits for accounts confirmed to be engaging in “content washing,” eliminating the platform’s tolerance for infringement-derived traffic.
• Develop Deep AI Comparison Technology: Invest in developing more sophisticated AI comparison technology capable of deep analysis of content’s logical structure, argumentative depth, and core viewpoints, moving beyond traditional text substitution detection to effectively identify “advanced content washing” .

3. For Content Creators and Digital Marketing Agencies (Building Barriers and Proactive Defense)

• Build High-Barrier Differentiated Content: Content creators must prioritize content differentiation as a core strategy, focusing on creating original content that is difficult for “content washing” tools and cheap writers to replicate, based on high professional barriers, real-time interaction, embedded services, or strong personalization . For example, integrate content with exclusive data, professional consulting, or service experiences.
• Proactively Use Technical Rights Confirmation: Creators should actively use blockchain evidence storage technology (such as the DCI system) to confirm their works’ rights, serving as preparation for future legal action and leveraging technology to empower their own copyright protection .

Top 10 FAQ: The Crisis of “Content Washing”

1. What is “content washing”?

“Content washing” is the practice of rewriting, restructuring, or using synonyms to modify someone else’s original content to pass it off as new. It is a form of plagiarism that is harder to detect and prosecute than direct copying.

2. Why is content washing a problem?

It devalues original work and discourages creators, who see their efforts stolen without credit or compensation. As illustrated by the lawyer’s story, this can lead to creators giving up on producing high-quality, original content, which damages the entire content ecosystem.

3. How does this relate to digital marketing?

The booming digital marketing and social media landscape has created an enormous, constant demand for new content to attract user engagement. This “content anxiety” creates a market for “content washing” as a cheap and fast way to generate posts, prioritizing quantity over originality.

4. What historical parallel does this situation have?

This crisis is compared to the “dark history” of the music industry in the late 1990s and 2000s. Widespread digital piracy caused a massive decline in global music revenue, showing how a creative industry can be devastated when intellectual property is not protected.

5. What is the “vicious cycle” of the content ecosystem?

It’s a process where:

1. Original creators post quality work.
2. “Content washers” rewrite and republish it, often stealing traffic and ad revenue.
3. The original creator’s motivation and income decline, leading them to stop creating.
4. The platform becomes filled with low-quality, unoriginal content.

6. What is the “creator’s dilemma” shown in the infographic?

The data (hypothetically) shows that original creators face high “fear of infringement,” low “income stability,” and must expend significant “energy/effort.” In contrast, “content washers” have lower fear, higher income stability, and can produce content with less effort, creating an unfair and demotivating environment.

7. Why is “content washing” worse than direct piracy?

As the lawyer’s story highlights, “content washing” is a gray area. Because the content is rewritten and not copied, it is extremely difficult to prove infringement or take legal action, leaving creators with little recourse.

8. What solutions are proposed to fix this problem?

The infographic suggests a multi-faceted approach, similar to how the music industry recovered:

• Technology: Better algorithms to detect “washed” content.
• Platforms: Taking responsibility by promoting original work and penalizing “washing.”
• New Models: Innovating with paid subscriptions or copyright models that directly reward creators.

9. Why is this not just a creator’s problem?

This is an ecosystem problem. For users, it means a flood of repetitive, low-quality content. For digital marketers and brands, it ultimately means their message is diluted in a sea of unoriginal “noise,” leading to lower engagement and trust.

10. What is the main message of the report?

The main message is a warning: if the digital content industry does not find a way to protect and reward its original creators, it risks repeating the “lost decade” of the music industry, leading to a future where the internet is full of content, but empty of originality.