On Copyright Infringement Of Video-sharing Websites

With the rapid development of the internet and the improvement of internet-users'level, more and more users become publishers of internet information instead of only being information receiver. As a result, video-sharing websites such as YouTube in US,Youku in China, arise to provide a platform for internet-users to upload and share videos. However a large portion of the "user-generated" videos being made available on these video-sharing websites are not "generated" by users at all, but rather consists of excellent film and TV series owned by owners with exclusive right to reproduce and distribute. As a result, video-sharing websites are more often than not sued to undertake secondary copyright liability. Involvement in these lawsuits has rendered the development of these websites rather difficult.In the famous YouTube case, the judges adjudge that YouTube has conducted the procedure of "notice-take down" according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), thus it could exempt from liability to pay compensation. The Plaintiffs claim to pay compensation of 1 billion was rejected. However, due to the difference of website operation mode and difference of the litigation between USA and China, it is important to discuss how the video-sharing websites in China can utilize Safe Harbor to protect itself from these lawsuits and how the litigation in China could be improved to protect the copyright as well as the video-sharing websites. This paper tries to apply comparative analysis,case analysis and other methods to video-sharing websites in the tort liability systems analysis. Apart from the introduction section, this paper is divided into three parts:The first chapter focuses on liability for copyright infringement. This chapter is divided into four parts:the first part is about the legal status of video-sharing websites; the second part discusses the direct copyright infringement liability of video-sharing websites:what is direct copyright infringement; under what circumstances video-sharing websites should assume direct infringement liability. The third part is about indirect infringement liability:the development of the fault liability principle, and according to the principle of fault liability, how to determine subjective fault of the video-sharing websites;In view of China's vicarious infringement liability provisions mainly take America's provisions for reference, this part analyzes the problems existing in the process of reference. The last part discusses how the video-sharing websites assume infringement liability.The second chapter discusses the "safe harbor" provisions for the video-sharing websites to exempt from claims of secondary copyright liability. The "information network transmission right protection regulations" in China provides five kinds of situations for the video-sharing websites from assuming infringement liability. This section firstly analyzes the relationship between the five situations and if it is necessary for the video-sharing websites to meet all of the five situations to exempt from assuming infringement liability;Then it analyzes the five situations respectively combining with the different sentences of the courts.The third chapter tries to offer some suggestions for the stipulations and the practice of China to balance the development interests of video sharing website as a new technology industry and the interests of the copyright owner. These proposals are mainly aimed at the problems existing in legislations in China on liability for Copyright infringement of video-sharing websites, including the formulation of law, which stipulates clearly the externalization of indirect infringement liability, the introduction of mandatory high-tech technical standards to prevent infringement, and the establishment of compensation system. In this way, we could realize a win-win situation between video-sharing websites and the copyright owner.