We use a Python script to discover pirated videos of yours on Chinese video websites, then grab the metadata to build a form to get the statistics of the pirated videos which are sourced, on Bilibili. Then we multiply the statistics by the Factor P, which is 20, to finally get the estimated panorama-ish statistics. The Factor P is calculated based on a survey to represent the relationship between the number of sourced videos on Bilibili and the number of sourced and unsourced videos on all Chinese video websites. This is by no means an accurate method, but please note that the pirated videos do exist, and this method gives us an estimation of the scale of the status quo.

Income-wise, according to multiple oral and video evidences provided by Chinese video creators, their income (CNY) generated by video views is roughly 0.1% of their total video views. This is to say, if you multiply your total video views by 0.001 and then convert the outcome to USD, you get your estimated loss caused by video piracy.

Factor P:

To obtain an estimated number of pirated videos on Chinese video platforms, we need a factor that represents the multiplicative relationship between: a. the number of videos with source information on Bilibili, and b. the number of videos with and without source information on all Chinese video platforms. Let’s call it “Factor P” for now.

First, I personally conducted a survey on 1062 pirated videos across five Chinese video websites, of which 852 videos lack source information. Based on the Law of Large Numbers, we can essentially ascertain that unsourced pirated video is 4 times the sourced ones.  

Due to the fact that almost all Chinese video platforms do not provide an accurate third-party searching feature, plus they do not provide the total number of their videos hosted, we can do nothing but to guess the total number of pirated videos by choosing one platform as an average reference. Let’s assume that the total video amount is relative to the user amount across platforms. According to a business report (https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/629638015), Bilibili’s user base accounts for 21% of China’s online video market.

This is to say, our Factor P is 4*5=20. So, we multiply the statistics we scrape from Bilibili by 20 to estimate your numbers across all Chinese video platforms.

You can see our complete survey here.