Relief Path Of The Rights Of People Under The Principle Of "safe Haven"

After entering into WEB2.0 era, with the rapid development of video sharing service in the Internet, sharp increase in the number of video sharing sites has been happening, meanwhile, the conflicts of copyright infringement between video sharing site and the copyright owner have become increasingly prominent. According to the traditional fault liability principle of copyright tort, the video sharing site, as Internet service provider for Internet users to upload infringing works, shall assume jointly tort liability. With the purpose of encouraging the emerging Internet technology and balancing the interests between Internet service providers and the copyright owners, the United States pioneered the principle of "safe harbor" provisions, stipulating that the video sharing websites may be exempted from bearing tort liability so long as they accord with the relevant regulations. It is generally believed that the recent two successful application of"safe harbor"principle by Tudou.com in the lawsuits against it for possible copyright infringement, indicates that the principle may prevail in future judicial practice. The emergence of the"safe harbor"principle confines the Internet service providers from assuming tort liabilities for its service infringement which shall be actually assumed by the Internet users, however, the Internet service providers may obtain benefits from such infringements. The particularity of Internet infringement and its efficient and convenient communication means lead to the great and irreversible loss in the interests the copyright owners suffered. It is impossible to compensate the loss suffered by the copyright owners through the infringement damage compensation. Therefore, this paper is to introduce the background of the"safe harbor"principle and its significance, and demonstrate the feasibility of application of the existing unjust enrichment in the civil law system for relieving the rights of the copyright owners, and analyze the difficulties and problems of concrete application of this relief path, and finally make a brief introduction to the copyright levy system.This paper, at its Preamble, mainly introduces the academic background and practical significance of this subject, and the study content and methods, for reasoning and analysis, and gives the answers to the aforesaid questions. The main body is divided into two parts. Part I mainly introduce the"safe harbor"principle and analyze its shortcomings. Part II mostly discusses the relief paths for the copyright owners, starting with presenting the unjust enrichment system and its constitutive elements and types, following with discussing the theoretical base on which the video sharing websites constitutes the unjust enrichment of infringing on the rights and interests in copyright infringement, and expounding the difficulties by using such relief paths, namely how to define"return"scope of unjust enrichment, and further discussing the problems in applying unjust enrichment both practically and procedurally. Secondly, by introducing the copyright levy system, the second part of Part II gives preliminary research and analysis on how to apply such system in prior compensation for the copyright owners'loss instead of subsequent relief. Finally, this paper concludes that the video sharing websites constitute the unjust enrichment of infringing on the rights and interests for their users'behaviors of uploading infringing works, and the copyright owners may have the aid of unjust enrichment in relieving their rights and interests. This paper also concludes that more study shall be made on the copyright levy system, so as to better protect the private rights and interests of the copyright owner.