Research On The Copyright Law Protection Of The Works Of Folklore In China

Works of Folklore is the creative literate and artistic,which is created by the specific social groups or personal and developed by the successors generation after generation, and expresses the groups'specific characterictics or cultural heritages and reflecting their own history, traditions, living surroundings and religions.Therefore works of Folklore possess the features of group-work, location-dependability and individual inheritence.Because of the lack of a complete effective protection mechanism for the Works of Folklore, many Folklore have been distorted or abused in a relative long time.Therefore to protect the Works of Folklore effectively and correctly is a key issue for its inheritence and the development of the chinese culture.The primary interational basis for the copyright protection in the Works of Folklore are:" The Berne Convention","Bangui Agreement", and "Arab Copyright Convention" and etc;Currently the countries that have implemented the copyright procteted mode are mostly in Africa and South America. Among all the european developed countries, only England has explictly specified the protection for the Works of Folklore from copyright law. Based on the experiences from the countries that have explictly provided copyright protection for Works of Folklore, the current copyright system should be properly reformed and a specific copyright protected mode suitable for the Works of Folklore should be set up, so that all the problems within their copyright protection process, such as identitys of the subject of rights, the time limit of protection, the essential features of originality can be solved. The Works of Folklore should belong to the owner group, and a specific agency for the rights of the subjects should be set up to support the owner group when they are deficient in the civil capability.Until now the legisation related with the Works of Folklore in China are mostly administrative laws, regional laws and regulations.These laws and regulations are not only limited with coverage and at a relative low level, but also lack of unfication and authority, thereafter not able to be implemented nationalwide.The copyright protection for Works of Folklore are not as abundant as the other works.The Moral Rights include only the right to publish, to declare the ownership and to remain integrity, and the Property Rights include only the right to use, to transfer and to get payment. As for the infringement act of Works of Folklore, the imputation principle, combined from fault principle and fault presumption principle is suitable, what is more, a comprehensive remedies composed of adminstrative, civil and penal measures can be taken too.