Lao Ding, 40, a doctoral student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), had never felt so embarrassed as he began working with a team of young researchers in their 20s in Beijing.

Eager to bridge the generation gap and share common topics, Lao bought a DVD of The Promise and watched the $35-million production to better understand a famous parody of the film by Hu Ge and follow the anti-Promise backlash around the blogosphere.

Hu Ge is a blogger in Shanghai who does freelance video editing for animation and advertising companies. After seeing the latest disappointing offering by the Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm Award-winning director Chen Kaige, he made a 20-minute spoof of the film, called The Steamed Bun Murder, to “practice his editing skills.” The video clips spread quickly around the Web through his friends. Irritated, Chen threatened in February to sue Hu for defamation and copyright violation.

As a fan of European films, Lao has never liked the Hollywood elements that make movies a box office success. Thus, it was no surprise that he did not like The Promise, but neither did he take a fancy to Hu’s parody because of the “insulting sarcasm,” to which the “old-fashioned” Lao has not gotten accustomed.

He admitted, however, that while he was puzzled by what Chen wanted to express in his movie, he did enjoy Hu’s skill in mocking Chen’s didacticism.

Were it not for Hu’s parody and the opinions of the controversy in the blogosphere, there is little chance that Lao, and many others, would have seen The Promise. This fact justifies what a person who calls himself Hopesome said in his blog, or personal Web log, called Podcasting Podium, “It is ‘unwise’ for current copyright protection to restrict the public non-commercial reproduction of works, because in an era when everyone is allowed to produce and ‘remix’ Internet content, excessive copyright protection risks sacrificing the lion’s share of copyright holders.”

Hopesome continued, “The movie and music industries, and traditional media, should be far-sighted and ease their old ways of copyright protection to allow the creation of much more interesting and wonderful remixed material, seeking a win-win situation for each party involved.”

Hu’s parody is a podcasting product. Different from blogging, which uses text, podcasting is a mixture of audio and video materials. The entire blogosphere reflects the second generation of the Internet, or Web 2.0, which encompasses sharing, participation, remixability and convergence.

Web 2.0 is “the living Web,” a platform enticing people to contribute and consume. According to Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of computer book publisher O’Reilly Media, Web 2.0 applications “make the most of the advantages of that platform,” and “create network effects through an ‘architecture of participation.’”

Live, work and blog

According to the China Internet Industry Survey Report 2005-06 issued by the Internet Society of China, by the end of 2005, the number of Chinese bloggers amounted to 16 million, out of a worldwide total of more than 100 million. It also predicts that the number of Chinese bloggers will exceed 60 million by the end of this year, accounting for one third of the total population of Internet users in China, and reach 100 million next year.

Blogging changes the way the Internet functions in people’s daily lives because, as David Weinberger, co-author of the bestseller Cluetrain Manifesto, describes. “On the Web, everyone is famous to 15 people.” Ordinary Internet users form the foundation of the blogging pyramid, as Hu Ge did before he became a household name. Their blogs deal with their personal lives, happiness and sorrow, opinions and gossip.