Gaining legitimate copyright authorization is only the beginning, and YYeTs is still far from winning its comeback race.

YYeTs has surprisingly made a successful comeback. Recently, the topic #YYeTs has gone legitimate# hit the Weibo hot search list. This American drama enlightenment site for countless post-80s and post-90s generations has returned in the form of the "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App after a 5-year hiatus, making many users exclaim "My youth is back".

The starting point of this hot search is that some netizens posted the "Welcome back old users" email sent by YYeTs to its long-time users, which mentioned "We can finally meet on the App". Shortly afterwards, the "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App appeared in the app stores of manufacturers including Apple, Xiaomi, Honor, etc. It is developed by Wasu Media Network Co., Ltd., and the actual operating entity of this App is Share Wonderful Network Technology (Jiaxing) Co., Ltd.

The predecessor of YYeTs is YYeTs Subtitle Group founded by overseas Chinese students in Canada. It was originally a non-professional subtitle group for overseas film and television programs with the main purpose of sharing, communication and learning. When it established an independent forum in June 2006, it still insisted that it was "not for profit", and people joined purely out of personal interest. At the same time, high-quality American dramas were booming. With accurate translation, fast and complete updates of video sources, YYeTs stood out and quickly accumulated a large number of users.

However, YYeTs became popular thanks to the imperfect domestic copyright protection mechanism at that time and the overseas copyright holders being too far away to enforce their rights, which gave it a chance to survive in the cracks. As the bilateral copyright cooperation framework between China and the United States gradually improved, YYeTs' practice of using geographical advantages to avoid judicial jurisdiction no longer worked. In 2009, YYeTs was investigated for pirated resources, and was forced to announce its transformation, abandon video download services, and only provide subtitle services.

However, this "defensive strategy" of YYeTs did not work permanently. In October 2014, the Motion Picture Association included YYeTs as one of the major pirate websites in a global audio-visual piracy investigation report. Under the pressure of copyright, YYeTs officially announced the shutdown of its site one month later.

This site shutdown also laid the groundwork for the split of YYeTs in 2017. After that, although part of the original YYeTs team continued to operate in the form of a subtitle group, it was eventually investigated by the police in 2021 due to piracy issues, while the other part of the team's YYeTs Video App was renamed "Duoduo Video" and transformed into an overseas content community.

Is the recently re-launched "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App created by the original team of the YYeTs subtitle group? The answer is no. Some netizens got the following answer after consulting members of the YYeTs subtitle group: "It is certain that the subtitles of the YYeTs subtitle group are not used. It seems that it uses the name of YYeTs and the video sources of Wasu TV."

Moreover, the resurrected "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" is completely different from the previous YYeTs. Not only has the App icon changed from blue to red, but the business model has also been completely revised, adopting a paid subscription model: 25 yuan for a monthly membership, 60 yuan for a quarterly membership, and 175 yuan for an annual membership. More importantly, the operating entity of the "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App has nothing to do with the YYeTs of the past.

Public data shows that the operating company of the "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App was established in 2024. Its legal representative Li Yuanmin is the founder of Zhongwang, one of the first batch of national Baidu agents, and one of the first batch of investors in Internet domain names. In short, the "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App is essentially a "backdoor listing". However, even with the signboard of "YYeTs", their road does not seem to be easy.

According to Li Yuanmin, the person in charge of the "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App, targeted point-to-point promotion will be launched successively from this month, striving to activate 30 million existing users. Then the question arises: why does the new YYeTs follow the paid route of iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku? The reason is simple: the old path is completely blocked.

To avoid copyright legal risks, previous resource sharing websites such as YYeTs often adopted the "user upload" model, where resources were basically provided by individuals rather than the platform, so as to use the safe harbor principle to avoid potential copyright issues.

However, in the judicial practice of the past few years, the operation of avoiding copyright risks through "user uploads" no longer works, and such behavior will be recognized as for profit at the legal level. Now although iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku are not having an easy time, their business models centered on paid subscriptions are stable enough. Although the subscription system itself is not a problem, the real test for the "Share Wonderful Content by YYeTs" App is how to activate 30 million existing users.

After all, feelings are not everything, and they are a one-time resource. Although it has remarkable effect on attracting traffic, it is extremely difficult to make users pay continuously. If a product can make users keep paying, the so-called feelings will not have room to exist, and the accurate description of it should be "evergreen". In the past, the audience of YYeTs was typical "free-riders". Even though the price of 25 yuan per month is relatively affordable among a large number of video websites now, it still cannot stand comparison.

It used to be free, but now it charges fees. How can old users of YYeTs not complain that "my youth is also charging fees"? But when users have to pay anyway, why don't they choose iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku, which have more exclusive dramas and variety shows, as well as 4K picture quality and Dolby Atmos? In the early years, YYeTs was popular because of its high subtitle quality and wide content coverage, but the new YYeTs has none of these advantages.

Subtitle groups rely on volunteers, do not need to go through the review process, and do not have to wait for import approval numbers, which is purely "working for love". However, formal companies need to make profits. At present, AI has fully penetrated the translation market, how can commercial subtitles compare with the carefully polished works of enthusiasts?

What's more fatal is that going legitimate means that copyright procurement and import processes must be made public. You have to compete with iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku for popular content, and it is difficult to make money from niche content. In this case, old users will inevitably compare the new product with the old YYeTs in terms of subtitle quality and content library, and the conclusion is undoubtedly that the present is inferior to the past.

In a sense, the fate of the new YYeTs is most likely the same as that of the new Tianya, which is just a tool for netizens to miss the past and satisfy their feelings. Although it is easy to say "I will support it", when it comes to paying money, everyone will carefully consider whether it is worth it.

【All images in this article are from the Internet】

This article comes from the WeChat official account "Three Easy Life" (ID: IT-3eLife), the author is San Yijun, and 36Kr publishes it with authorization.