Internet Copyright Regulations And The Effective Dissemination And Fair Use Of Information

The internet began to prevail all over the world at the end of the 2O~ century, and has more and more impact on the social production and human life. Being a channel of information delivery, the internet has become a very important media through which people can obtain information because of its features of promptness, wideness and interaction. Thus, the information holder may acquire a new profiting field. The internet information, though a new form of media, should also be put into protection as such traditional media as newspaper, broadcast and TV do, so that the information holder can actualize his interests. However, the internet technology has greatly reduced the costs of information copy, delivery and application, and has broken the former interests balance system. As a result, it is necessary to redistribute the interests among the information producer, distributor and consumer, and to expand and restrain reasonably the internet copyright holder抯 rights. Based on the cost-benefit theory, the paper analyses the economic rationality of the expansion and confinement of internet copyright, which can promote the effective broadcast of information to the most extent. Justice and benefits constitute a dual value standard in law, and which of them should be put in the first place is a practical problem. The internet copyright law is an area which is closely related to economic benefits, so the correspondent research and legislation should follow the principle of 揵enefit priority, justice supplement? Moreover, this principle has inner congruity with the copyright protection balance theory and observes the basic principle of copyright legislation as well. The effective delivery of information has three necessary conditions: 0 the development of technology; ?the clear delimitation of information monopoly; ?the minimization of information delivery (business). The ultimate purposes of internet copyright systems are to delimitate the internet information copyright, to adjust information delivery cost, to improve copyright benefits and finally to promote information delivery. The iii 7 MASTER S THESIS analysis on the cost ?benefit of internet copyright expansion shows that under the guidance of strong copyright protection idea, the over-expansion of copyright, though clearly delimitates the property and decreases the uncertainty of business, increases the information delivery cost and property conflicts, and thus barricades the publication of information. To simplify the property business becomes the only effective method to balance the interests and promote information delivery. Authorized license, statutory license, compulsory license and fair use are the mains forms of regularizing copyright business. According to the cost ?benefit theory of micro-economics, this paper specifies the dividing lines between authorized license, statutory license, compulsory license and fair use, i.e., finds the balance point of economic interests. Meanwhile, this paper analyzes, from the perspective of legal principle and custom, the existing necessity, capability and the concrete legal application of the above property business forms. The present paper proposes that due to the improvement of technology and system regulations, the information publication and application costs are decreasing, according the cost-benefit theory and balance theo...