The Regulation Of Misuses Of Technical Measures In Copyright Law

In response to the challenges to copyright protection in the digital network age, copyright owners are beginning to use technical measures as private relief, but technical measures in this ever-changing environment of digital networks are vulnerable to circumvent or break, so the copyright owners realize it is not enough to just rely on technology to protect rights, they need to have protection of the law. Then, driven by the copyright owners, many countries have introduced legislation prohibiting circumvention of technical measures. Technical measures have a negative effect, such legislation comes with the misuses of technical measures, because copyright owners want to maximize their own interests against the public interest at all, breaking the interests balance mechanism of copyright law, causing serious consequences. As a result, the copyright legislation in respect to technical measures must also take into account how about regulation of the misuses of technical measures. This paper analyzes the basic issues of technical measures, the causes and hazards of the misuse of technical measures, the foreign legislative regulation and our specific situation, then do some exploring to improve the regulation of misuses of technical measures in China, in order to find a system of regulation of misuses of technical measures meeting China's national conditions.This paper has four chapters, a total of about 30 thousand words.The first chapter is the analysis of the legality of technical measures. At first, I introduce the concept and the major type of technical measures, and then conclude that the nature of technical measures is auxiliary means to keep the balance of the interests in the copyright laws through analyzing the background of technical measures. And then I propose four elements of the legitimacy of technical measures.The second chapter is to analyze the need for regulating the misuses of technical measures. This Chapter first explains what the misuses of technical measures are, then analyzes three typical performance of misusing technical measures by introducing some cases, so we can see the hazards of the misuses of technical measures.In the third chapter, I attempt to explore the system of regulating the misuses of technical measures. I believe that the principles of interests balance in copyright law should be established as the basic principles of regulating misuses. And under the guidance of this principle, the two aspects of the specific regulatory approach are proposed, that is to set exceptions of anti-circumvention of technical measures and to establish specialized agencies to intervene the misuses of technical measures. By introducing the foreign legislation and practice, these two aspects of the specific regulatory approach are specified.The fourth chapter is the suggestion linked with China's specific conditions. I analyze the defect of the current of legislation about the regulation of misuses of technical measures in China firstly, and then according to the system of regulating the misuses of technical measures proposed in third chapter, I make some suggestion for regulating the misuses of technical measures in China.