A Comparative Study On The Protection Of Fair Use Doctrine In Anti-circumvention Law

Digital technology and the internet have facilitated the widespread digital piracy which poses great challenge to the traditional approach of copyright protection. Copyright owners thus have employed new methods to protect their works in the digital world, primarily the technological measures that control both access and use of their digital works. However, these technological measures are threatened by the circumvention technology which makes them useless. The increasing circumvention activities cause copyright owners to seek legal protection of their technological measures. Within this context, many countries begin to make their anti-circumvention legislation and two international treaties relating to the protection of technological measures have been adopted. However, since the beginning, such anti-circumvention legislation has received continuous critiques. One of them is that to provide legal protection to technological measures will eliminate copyright fair use and thus break the balance between copyright owners and the public. To preserve fair use, different countries have made various efforts in their anti-circumvention laws. This article conducts a comparative study of the anti-circumvention laws of four countries, aiming to provide useful suggestions for the improvement of anti-circumvention law in China.This article has for chapters with a total number of 30000 words.The first chapter introduces the anti-circumvention laws of the United States, EU, Australia and Japan. The second chapter discuses the impacts on the fair use doctrine made by the protection of technological measures. The third chapter is the main part of the article which makes a comparative study of the four countries'anti-circumvention laws. The last chapter induces the anti-circumvention law in China and provides some suggestions for its improvement.