Study On ISP's Infringement

As a symbol of information society the internet has been integrated into our daily life, changing our life at the same time. Not only can the development of the science advance the development of productivity and the transformation of life style but also promote the evolution of the legal rule. The evolution is most visible in the internet world. As an indispensable part of the practice and operation of the internet the ISP is involved in complex legal relationship. This article is trying to find a way out of the complicated legal relationship and the way is the classified study to the ISP based on the infringement which the ISP is involved in. The thought that we has followed is to analyze the basic theory first, second is the empirical analysis based on real cases then back to theoretical analysis at last. The paradigm can be described as theory to practice then to theory. The problem which we want to solve in this article is which attitude we should take toward the infringement of the ISP under such level of scientific development, in other words, how to determine the infringement as well as the responsibility of the ISP. This article is comprised of four parts:Part one: the ISP and the on-line infringement. This part mainly introduced the concept of internet service provider and classified the ISP from the angle of technology and law. The reason why we should classify the ISP is the difference of the role that different ISP plays in infringement. Based on the classification to the ISP, we set forth our positioning to various ISPs, which provides the object for the following part. Lastly we make some basic analysis to traditional torts and on-line infringement, including the type of responsibility and it's constituent elements.Part two: the infringement of internet access provider. In this part we firstly demonstrated the basic character of the iap, which provides only access service without control or edit to the information transferred by it's client. Then we focused on the main service provided by the iap: internet access and system caching combined with two American cases. In the empirical analysis, we mainly took two American cases as example discussing the finding on the infringement of the iap. Lastly we set forth our opinion on this issue that we should not impose the iap too many liabilities as they merely serve as a conduit. Rather, we should restrict the iap's liability properly based on balancing the benefit of the iap as well as the copyright holders.Part three: the infringement of internet content provider. It's a very complicated party and easy to be involved in on-line infringement. At first we classified the icp into two types: provider who provides stored information and provider who provides link information and analyzed the infringement that the two types may be involved in. In the empirical analysis we discussed the liability of icp combined with some real cases. Lastly we analyzed icp's liability from two aspects as the duty of the icp and the restriction to it's liability.Part four: the infringement of internet platform provider. First of all we raised two questions: is the iap capable to screen the information posted on the platform? Does the iap assume the duty to screen the on-line information? After analyzing we released the answers to the two questions and then looked into the liability of the iap. In the empirical analysis, we introduced threes classical cased in order to illustrate the different attitudes taken by the court during different period. Lastly we put forward two standards of determining the infringement of the iap: the power of screening and editing as well as the intent with emphasis laid on combining these two standards.