IPCFS: Chapter 101 Part 1

“Compensation for taking it off the shelves?”

The moment the producer Sun Changjiang heard this, his face became even uglier. He glared at Shen Yanda, who had a stiff face. He lost all of his politeness and flattery from the drinking party the night before.

Sun Changjiang took his assistant’s work phone and immediately called the leader of the TV station’s movie and television procurement team.

After five seconds, the call was connected.

“Hello.”

“Hello, is this Mr. Jiang? It is me, Sun Changjiang.” There was a fake smile on Sun Changjiang’s face.

“Old Sun, you have really made me miserable this time!” Mr. Jiang on the other end of the phone exclaimed angrily. “In order to let your drama air during the winter holiday, I put in many good words to the leaders of the station.”

He also offended the producer of another drama that was scheduled to be released.

“You are so good now. There is a lot of noise on the Internet. Your drama is actually a plagiarized drama with solid evidence?”

“Shen Yanda, that old thing, he is usually so arrogant. I didn’t expect him to be a waste of space who eats the dividends of his ex-wife!”

“I must have been really unlucky for eight lifetimes to have cooperated with a crew like yours!”

Through the speaker, Mr. Jiang’s taunts fell one after another into the ears of the three people in the meeting room.

Shen Yanda’s face turned blue and red like a changing palette.

In order to go through the back door and release the drama early, they had originally given Mr. Jiang a lot of money.

Unexpectedly, the other person would turn his face and refuse to recognize them now.

However, Shen didn’t dare to speak out against him.

If he really provoked the person in charge of the TV station, the drama ‘The Long Song of the Southern Dynasty’ and the investment he paid for would be completely wasted!

At this time, Sun Changjiang was too lazy to help Shen Yanda say good things.

Once Mr. Jiang on the other end of the phone stopped being so angry, Sun Changjiang apologized and agreed. “Yes, this matter is indeed due to the negligence of our crew. We didn’t control the trend of public opinion on the Internet.”

“However, there is no need to remove this drama, right? Everyone is in the same circle, and the criticism of the netizens won’t exceed a week at most…”

Before he could finish speaking, he was interrupted by Mr. Jiang. “You guys are taking the issue quite lightly.”

“The higher-ups want the TV station merit award. The audit document issued for the award clearly states that plagiarism is forbidden. If our station continues to air your drama, couldn’t this be considered as knowingly committing a violation?”

The TV station that bought the copyright of ‘The Long Song of the Southern Dynasty’ and aired it was Xiangjiang TV. They had been competing with Shanghai TV for the position of the ‘Big brother of Satellite TV’ for many years.

For the comprehensive ‘evaluation of the best and first place’, these two TV stations were competing for ‘1st place.’

Originally, the ratings of ‘The Long Song of the Southern Dynasty’ were better than Shanghai TV’s ‘Newly Born Master Detective.’ The director of Xiangjiang TV was very satisfied. In last week’s regular meeting, he praised the purchasing team for its unique vision.

This afternoon, there was the large-scale denunciation of public opinion. It wasn’t just the official drama blog and Shen Yanda’s Weibo that were being scolded. Even Xiangjiang TV received a lot of complaint calls, and there were threats from the public.

“If you don’t take down such a vicious drama that is clearly plagiarized, then I will report it to the General Administration.”

This month was the key juncture of the ‘evaluation of the best and first place.’ How could the TV station allow such a thing to happen?

The moment the director learned about this, he became angry and scolded the procurement team fiercely.

He blamed them for not doing a good job of research before buying the drama.

The director not only asked the members in charge of procuring ‘The Long Song of the Southern Dynasty’ to write a review and submit it, but he also deducted all their bonuses for the month.

Now the entire procurement team was full of complaints. As the leader, Jiang Fan felt even more pressure.

“To tell you the truth, the team of supervisors from the General Administration personally called me to ‘care’ about this matter. Your drama must be taken off the shelves and will naturally be replaced with a new drama.”

“As for the losses caused to the station, you should be mentally prepared to compensate for it!”

At this time, who would dare to say good things about this drama?

A public boycott and supervision from headquarters. The one who aired such a drama would be unlucky!

The two parties had agreed when the contract was first signed.

If Party A caused irreversible losses due to Party B’s human error during the broadcast period, Party A had the right to claim compensation from Party B!

The half-aired drama had to be taken off the shelves?

Not only were they unable to make money, but they also had to pay compensation?

Now Shen Yanda couldn’t hold back. “Mr. Jiang, can you help plead for us with the station again? The previous plot only had a small amount that was similar. The subsequent plot can be re-edited and spliced!”

Mr. Jiang heard Shen Yanda’s voice and sneered. “Re-editing? How much content did you copy? Do you still remember what you copied clearly?”

Re-editing and splicing?

He was afraid it wasn’t just a matter of simply cutting!

“Shen Yanda, don’t view yourself so highly! Everyone called you a teacher because they respected your past works and accomplishments. Now you aren’t even a fart!”

Plagiarized his ex-wife’s script, plagiarized ‘original’ works, cheated in his marriage to raise a mistress, and conducted workplace harassment.

A pile of mud!

The more Mr. Jiang spoke, the angrier he became. He wanted to rush out through the phone to violently beat Shen Yanda up.

How many busy people had been involved with this idiot?

The phone was rudely hung up. The cold, busy tone clearly foreshadowed the end of the conversation.

Sun Changjiang’s chest rose and fell. Then he suddenly slammed the table and stood up. “Shen Yanda, you can do it yourself!”

He was the chief producer, so he had to rush back to the company to find a way to salvage the situation and mitigate their losses.

If the situation really developed to the point where there was no turning back, he would definitely seek compensation from Shen Yanda!

Sun Changjiang slammed the door and left with his assistant.

Shen Yanda was stunned in his seat, fame and shame intertwined in his heart. The contacts and status he had been proud of were just a false dream.

After around five or six minutes, Shen Yanda returned from the office on the second floor to the office hall on the first floor.

It wasn’t even 10 o’clock at night.

The screenwriting staff, who didn’t get a holiday during the Spring Festival and stayed up late to work overnight, were all gone. Everyone’s workstations had been cleaned up, as if there had never been a trace of work.

On the main desk, there were collective letters of resignation.

“Mr. Shen, from today onwards, we will no longer work for people like you who just rely on your reputation. For the scripts currently in progress, we have already called the respective movie and television companies, and they will pay us the copyright fees in the future.”

Previously, the studio took advantage of Shen Yanda’s reputation to cooperate with other movie and television companies. They were responsible for producing some small online scripts.

The screenwriter employees were responsible for script creation and commissions.

Shen Yanda read this and gritted his teeth in anger.

What was this?

The employees collectively fired their boss? They also took away his customers!

Before Shen Yanda could recover from his anger, a text message alert was heard on his mobile phone.

[Transaction reminder: Your bank card ending in 6754 has completed the transfer transaction…]

Shen Yanda saw the huge transfer record and almost couldn’t breathe. He quickly called Qian Yiren’s number.

Qian Yiren was the only one who knew his account password. The other person tricked it out of him with gentle words in bed.

Shen Yanda hadn’t thought about changing the password because he felt confident that Qian Yiren would definitely stick to him and not want to leave.

However, reality gave him another resounding slap. Qian Yiren had run away with his money?

Call rejected, call again, rejected again.

Just as Shen Yanda was on the verge of losing control, Qian Yiren sent him a voice WeChat message rather than answer the phone.

“In addition to the money in the bank card, I also took all the valuables from home. I had no name or assets for the past six or seven years. It is good if we can get together soon and separate. You should compensate for something after so many years.”

“Don’t contact me again in the future. By the way, Shen Yanda, I forgot to tell you that your bed skills are really bad.”

Shen Yanda roared angrily, “Qian Yiren, you bi*ch! It is against the law for you to run away with the money! I can call the police and have you arrested!”

It was a pity that before the message was sent, he was pulled into the blacklist by the other person.

Shen Yanda sat slumped in his seat, never more desperate than he was now.

He had been proud and high-profile for more than 10 years. He thought he had achieved fame. How did he end up this way?

His money was gone, his woman was gone, his work was gone, and his status was gone… he was used to living a good life of being sought after. From now on, what could he do?

Where exactly did the problem start?

Shen Yanda was trapped in huge chaos and was so anxious that sweat broke out.

Suddenly, he thought of the words Ji Li had said when he came to the door with the ‘plagiarized’ script.

-Now it seems that our different methods don’t work well together.

-I know that the control of plagiarism in the market is very loose right now. You have the prestigious title as a gold medal screenwriter, and people won’t care at all as long as your work is a big hit.

-However, I can’t accept such a script. You don’t cherish it, but I do.

After half a year, these words became more clearly imprinted in Shen Yanda’s mind.

In an instant, he regretted it until his intestines were blue!

If he had listened to Ji Li’s advice and reined himself back from the precipice, would everything still have happened?

If he hadn’t messed around behind his ex-wife’s back and dedicated himself to protecting his family, even returning the works that belonged to Song Fangmei to her, he probably wouldn’t have fallen to this point, right?

Repent! He repented!

***

Early the next morning.

The Chinese Screenwriters Association issued a notice.

They said that from the new year onward, the chaos in the industry would be rectified. In addition, the association had given a ‘list of industry focused audit personnel.’

All screenwriters on this list would not be able to cooperate with movie and television companies through private channels in the future. New works had to pass the review of the association to ensure the quality of the work before it was released to the market.

Shen Yanda’s name was at the top of the list. In addition, Wang Yongwei who previously altered the script was also on the list.

To put it more bluntly, this was the ‘blacklist’ of the screenwriting world.

Netizens cheered and applauded.

With such constraints, the movie and television companies and screenwriters would become more cautious in creating an adaptation. This indirectly cut off the way for unscrupulous screenwriters to make money.

Immediately afterwards, Xiangjiang TV released an announcement that they would remove ‘The Long Song of the Southern Dynasty’ and replace it with the new drama ‘Little Love Poems of the Wind and the Moon.’

The plagiarism drama was removed from the shelves?

The reaction was so fast?

This was simply unprecedented in the history of the Chinese movie and television industry!

Before netizens could recover from this efficient removal, the female protagonist Shi Meng and the male protagonist Wu Yimu jointly sued Shen Yanda, the producer and screenwriter of ‘The Long Song of the Southern Dynasty.’

Due to the crew’s lack of morality, the drama was taken off the shelves, and their efforts of four or five months were in vain.

If they didn’t shed all pretenses of cordiality to fight for their rights at this time, when would they be able to defend their rights?

Fans of the two people helped forward it, and the discussion on the hot search continued to soar.

The producers were unable to resist the heavy pressure and finally issued a long statement through their official Weibo.

They first issued a sincere apology to the actors and the audience. They promised to properly handle the losses caused to the actors and directly sued the screenwriter Shen Yanda.

It was because the producers believed that Shen Yanda violated the bottom line of morality first and then concealed the truth of the script, leading to huge losses for the entire crew!

Before one lawsuit was cleared, another one was filed.

Three days later, Song Fangmei teamed up with the small online authors who were plagiarized, and they also planned to sue Shen Yanda.

The former asked Shen Yanda to return the authorship of her previous works, while the latter asked Shen Yanda to make a public apology.

---

TL: Advance chapters are available over on my Patreon. You can go check out the details on my Patreon page.

Proofreader: Azure