The Study On The Indirect Infringement Liability System Of Copyright In The USA

The third party who should be responsible for the acts of copyright infringement party is what we called indirect infringement liabilities of copyright. Ever since the Shapiro case in 1963 to the P2P case happening on the internet, the indirect infringement liabilities system of copyright in U. S. A has develop ed gradually. As a common law traditional country, U. S. A statutes haves never absorbed that indirect infringement liabilities system of copyright. This kind of infringement liabilities system has been formulated in the body of cases which have become the basis of precedent of like circumstances for U. S. A courts. Based on this, the essay began from the first case of indirect infringement liabilities system of copyright and in timely matter and in accordance with typical cases discussed systematically indirect copyright infringement actions in the traditional, digitalized and internet ages. At the same time, the new forms of copyright infringements , especially indirect copyright infringements, will become common with the technological advancement, for example, using of P2P to undertake vicarious infringement and contributory infringement. As for this, U. S. A courts have developed new rules to make judgments on those new types of cases. For example, the standards of "Substantive non-infringement usage" and "luring infringements" have been established. All of these are to look for a balanced status between the private rights of the copyright holders and the rights of the public, which is the fundamental goal of copyright law.Relatively speaking, our legal rules about indirect copyright infringement have been very weak and imperfect, only some general principles. There is no clear definition of indirect copyright infringement. This is bad for the balancing of interests to the legislators and not good for the protection of copyright holders and also not sound for the technological progress. All those matters considered, we shall make the rules of indirect copyright infringement legislatively established when revising our Copyright Act. If so, we shall make it clear that legal right and interests be protected and intellectual working results be wildly spread. The goal of comparing is to get something useful for our similar legislation. At the end of this essay, in accordance with U. S. experience of indirect copyright infringement rules, some propositions of the legislation of indirect copyright infringement rules have been proposed.