The Copyright Protection Of Audiovisual Works In Digital Era

The arrival of digital era has a great influence on people's life. As the important source of human's spiritual entertainment, audiovisual works have gained rapid development with the drive of digital technology. However, the consequent problems begin to arouse more and more attention from the public. On the one hand, digital technology facilitates the development of audiovisual works, but on the other hand it gives way to those infringement acts. The presence of digital technology brings a great challenge to the present copyright law system of audiovisual works. The sharp progress in informational digital technology enormously strikes the law system of intellectual property, which makes some previous set principals and concepts could not explain and regulate new problems accompanying new technology. When the sharing speed of audiovisual works' resources is measured by seconds or smaller units instead of days or weeks, the most important task of copyright law is to more effectively control all kinds of duplication, sharing, publication and propagation of digital sources, to balance the interest between manufacturers and consumers, the interest between the owners of copyright and the public.From the angle of copyright law, this thesis makes a comparative analysis of legislative state at home and abroad and focusly discusses the reasons for difficulties of audiovisual protection and for problems in reality with domestic typical cases on audiovisual works protection. At last, this paper provides some suggestions for perfection of audiovisual works protection combing above-mentioned research.Here are five parts in this paper.The first part is to generalize audiovisual works. This part detailedly discusses the concept and connotation of audio-visual works and also points out actual and theoretical meanings of protection of audiovisual works.The second part is about the new progress of audiovisual works in digital era. This part states the meaning of digital technology, introduces the changes of audiovisual works under the influence of digital technology and determines the law nature of those works which are made through digital technology. The latter part focuses on the owners'rights which are different from those enjoyed by owners of traditional audiovisual works under the digital background. The third part illustrates new challenges from infringement.act of copyright law of audiovisual works in digital era. This part introduces new features of infringement act of audiovisual works copyright law and directs the specific characteristics. In the meantime, this part also focusly analyzes infringing problems from internet service providers, which are the main form of infringement act in digital era. This part also states in details about different infringement liabilities to internet service providers.The fourth part is mainly to make a comparative analysis of legislative state of copyright law protection of audiovisual works at home and abroad. Further discuss is made about the protection situation in reality combining some domestic cases.The last part illustrates the shortcomings in domestic protection of copyright law of audiovisual works and provides some suggestions in legislative perfection and institution construction.