Study On The Liability Of Copyright Infringement Of P2P Service Providers

The establishment and improvement of copyright legal system always emerged with the development of science and technology. From 1709, the birth of the first Britain copyright law, "Anna Law", was in response to printing technology. Since then, the emergence of every new communication technology would promote the development of the copyright legal system to some extent, such as the emergence of home videocorder, leading the birth of U.S. "Home Recording Act", which have become the Chapter 10 of US Copyright Act. The arrival of the Internet era, contribute to the birth of U.S. "Millennium Copyright Act," the EU's "E-commerce Directive" and other series of international copyright conventions. The further development of Information digitization and new means of internet transmission, has presented a great challenge to traditional copyright law, which made the interests balance maintained by the traditional copyright law began to tip. Around the copyright protection, the dispute was aroused between copyright owners, technology providers and the community, especially P2P technology coming out, aggravated the issue more.The P2P as a new means of internet transmission, break the means of the traditional paper transmission, and realize a directly file transmission and file sharing between different users. This kind of convenient and user-friendly network transmission once coming out, was popular and supported by the majority of users, quickly speeded all over the entire network market. Thereby, a large number of copyright works are being downloaded and communicated without limit, especially video recording works, all this is intensifying the conflict between network copyright owner and network communicators. With the development of P2P technology, it has already made the general public from the simply information receiver into a disseminator, However, considering the characteristics of the network own, it is not ideal to investigate a direct tort of the general end-users. Therefore, most of the copyright owners, based on its own interests and litigation costs the considerations, turn to investigate the P2P technology provider's infringement responsibility, such as the Napster case in the United States and the Grokster case, the case of Japan's MMO so.However, we know, P2P technology providers are not directly infringed the exclusive rights of copyright-related owned by the copyright owner, so not the direct copyright infringers of network copyright. They just provide network technology and network services, to provide the facilities for the direct infringer, and involve in direct tort of copyright intentional or not. If requesting P2P technology providers bear tort liability, can only based on the theory of indirect tort liability, investigate the indirect tort liability of P2P technology providers. The view has also been recognized by scholars and the judiciary. Therefore, in the countries of Britain and USA legal system, through a series of judicial precedents gradually formed a complete theoretical system of indirect responsibility. The traditional theory of copyright law, always have been a division of direct infringement and indirect infringement, however, no regulation about indirect responsibility in the copyright law of our country. Therefore, when P2P infringement occurred in China, the judicial practice would face considerable difficulties.At present, on civil liability, the domestic and overseas scholars reached an agreement that P2P service providers should bear the indirect responsibility for copyright infringement. However, still have dispute about the nature of certain acts for P2P software users, such as, whether P2P software users "download" behavior, in the end, is the act of investigating the legitimate rights of copyright owner, or in the scope of fair use? And whether invesgating the tort liability of P2P service providers should be consider as criminal liability or not, there are still inconsistent views. But it is not emphasis discussed in this article, The focus of this article is to discuss the assumed liabilities related issues of P2P service provider's indirect copyright Infringement.This paper briefly introduce the P2P technology and development models, to define whether the various types of P2P technology should bear tort liability, which kinds of tort liability should be bore? Through Analyzing the nature of the parties'infringement of copyright mainly in the P2P technology, get the result that the P2P service provider should bear the indirect Copyright Infringement. Then combined with internationally renowned P2P infringement case to analyze the relevant legal issues, summarizing the related issues treatment and trends of development. Finally, combined with the actual situation of China's legislature, this paper puts forward the existing issues when dealed with the P2P infringement case, and gives a strategy to solve the problem.