A Study Of Peer-To-Peer Copyright Infringement Issues

P2P technology has deeply changed transmission patterns of network information, and made users freely exchange and share documents without a dependence on central servers; it truly returns to technological features and value philosophies of Internet, and it has brought enormous convenience for the users, and has the broad application prospect. Meanwhile, the generation of such new technology has also resulted in a lot of legal issues, particularly the issue of copyright infringement. Numerous works protected by copyrights are transmitted and exchanged in the network through P2P software without authorization, which has not only brought huge damages to interests of copyright owners, but also posed grave challenges to the existing legal systems of copyrights. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the existing legal systems of copyrights, and build a new balance between interests of copyright owners and technological progresses.By applying methods of case study and comparative analysis, this paper has made detailed explorations of the issue of P2P copyright infringement; based on classical P2P cases of the US, this paper has mainly analyzed second liability of P2P network service providers, and by fully comparing them with Chinese legal systems and judicial practices on such issues, put forward proposals of legislation on regulating Chinese P2P copyright infringement issues. This paper consists of the three parts of introduction, text, and conclusions, of which the text mainly covers five sections: The First, based on an introduction of technological features of P2P, has stated the issue of progressiveness and thus resultant copyrights of P2P technologies, and laid a foundation for below analysis.The Second has analyzed legal natures of behaviors of P2P users"Download"and"Send", pointed out that their behaviors have gone beyond rational use and thus resulted in damage to copyright owners. Meanwhile, it has put forward proposals on doctrine of no-fault liability that should be applied in investigating P2P individual users for infringement liabilities under the law in China.The Third, the focus of this paper, has made detailed analysis of Napster, Aimster and Grokster cases as classical cases of applying US second liability system in the issue of P2P infringement first of all, and then further explorations of key issues in dispute. In respect of establishment of second liability liabilities of P2P network service providers, the focus in dispute is on identification of features of new technologies and actual infringement intentions of infringers. Authorities of legalization should take the continual relationship between users and network service providers as the key, identify actual infringement intentions of the indirect infringer on the ground of full consideration of features of new technologies, and build a balance among safeguarding interests of copyright owners, public interest and promoting sic-tech development to guide a good development of P2P industry.The Fourth, by analyzing present legislation situation of Chinese second liability systems and judicial practices of Chinese P2P cases, has concluded that Chinese joint tort regulated and second liability systems fail to be well combined, and Chinese P2P second liability systems should be established at an earlier date. Meanwhile, it has put forward proposals on legislation models and components of Chinese P2P second liability systems.The Fifth has introduced many non-lawsuit solutions to P2P infringement issues particularly copyright compensation systems beyond traditional lawsuit methods, and has carried on the contrastive analysis to these non-lawsuit methods, with a view to providing rational proposals on adopting a variety of means to solve P2P copyright infringement issues in a comprehensive manner in China.