Why was Yang Mi's portrait misused, and what was So-Young's infringement about?

[4] Compiled from: Red Star News
 
Case review
Recently, "the first stock of internet medical aesthetics" So-Young (SY.US) issued an apology statement showing that So-Young used Yang Mi's portrait without permission in its "So-Young" WeChat public account, publishing false information and content that disparaged Yang Mi. Yang Mi has no cooperation or other relationship with the company. The above actions have infringed upon Yang Mi's legal rights, causing negative impacts and losses to Yang Mi. So-Young sincerely apologizes to Yang Mi for the infringement.

 
 

It is reported that Yang Mi is not the first celebrity to sue So-Young. According to incomplete statistics, since October 2016, over 90 celebrities have sued So-Young for "online infringement liability disputes and portrait rights disputes," including Li Xiaolu, Qin Lan, Xu Weizhou, Jiang Qinqin, Zhang Hanyun, Lu Han, Hua Chenyu, and Ju Jingyi.

Frequent conflicts with celebrities may be related to So-Young's nature as an "internet medical aesthetics service platform" that inherently requires traffic.

 

 
《 Civil Code of the People's Republic of China 》
Article 1018
A natural person enjoys the right to likeness and has the right to legally make, use, disclose, or permit others to use his or her own likeness.
Likeness refers to the identifiable external image of a specific natural person reflected on a certain medium through images, sculptures, paintings, or other means.
 
Article 1019
No organization or individual may infringe upon another person's right to portrait by means of vilification, defacement, or forgery using information technology. Without the consent of the portrait right holder, no one may produce, use, or publicly disclose the portrait of the right holder, unless otherwise provided by law. Without the consent of the portrait right holder, the owner of a portrait work may not use or publicly disclose the portrait of the right holder by means of publication, reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, or otherwise.

 
 

 
[1] The author's perspective
Soap has used celebrities' images without permission more than once. It's no exaggeration to say that the celebrities who have sued Soap could span most of the entertainment industry. What's puzzling is that most companies, after being sued for infringement, would exercise restraint, at least avoiding the same mistake. But why does Soap repeatedly risk punishment to target celebrities? In fact, this is Soap's tactic to attract attention.

It is understood that Soap's revenue mainly comes from two parts: appointment service fees and information service fees. The former is the commission earned when consumers book medical aesthetic projects through Soap, while the latter is the promotion fees charged to medical aesthetic institutions on the platform. For both parts, traffic is crucial to Soap. Only by continuously attracting consumers can it convert them into actual transactions.

Perhaps from Soap's perspective, the compensation paid to celebrities is just an advertising cost for attracting traffic. But Soap ignores the audience's feelings. Before becoming consumers, we are all viewers of the platform, evaluating its trustworthiness. After all, medical aesthetic projects can affect appearance at the least, and life and health at the worst. If a platform repeatedly infringes rights, it will lose its reputation over time. Who would dare to trust and choose such a platform? Therefore, Soap's approach only gains temporary traffic and is far from a long-term strategy. It also serves as a warning to relevant authorities to introduce laws and regulations early to effectively curb this traffic "ambushing" phenomenon and protect citizens' legitimate rights.