SANYA /China/, December 7. /TASS/. The 6th Hainan International Film Festival (HIFF) focused on the protection of intellectual property. An international copyright trading platform was launched during the event, where officials signed a Sino-Spanish agreement on transactions in this field.

Sun Baolin, head of the PRC Intellectual Property Protection Center, emphasized that the film industry is "an integral part of cultural development, whose prosperity directly reflects the industrial level, the 'soft power' of a country or region," at the Forum on International Cooperation in the Film and Television Industry held during HIFF.

"The copyright agreements is a bridge, a link that promotes international cooperation, promotes cultural exchanges in the film industry," he stressed.

The official pointed out that work on copyright protection is inseparable from scientific and technological progress. According to him, intellectual property is one of the most pressing issues directly related to the digitalization of human civilization. Sun Baolin pointed out that artificial intelligence has greatly improved the efficiency of content creation in the film industry, but in the process of human-computer interaction, the public has faced a challenge: copyright infringement has become more frequent.

"This is a universal problem. Not only China, all countries are facing it," added the head of the center. He pointed to "new needs and challenges" related to the content created by digitization. "In the current era of rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, we need to take many measures to strike a balance between industry growth and copyright protection," Sun Baolin concluded.

HIFF is recognized as one of the four major film festivals in the People's Republic of China, and will be held for the first time in December 2018. It has hosted world-renowned actors and directors such as Jackie Chan, Nicolas Cage, Johnny Depp and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The 2024 Hainan Film Festival themed "From Oceans, With Visions" is held from December 4 to 10, 2023.