Study Of The Legal Issues Of Copyright Protection Of Technical Measures

As a powerful means to protect copyright, technological measures are widely used to deal with more and more serious infringements of copyright by obligees in digital times. Meanwhile, many kinds of methods or tools are developed to direct against technological measures and weaken the effects of technological measures. So many countries and districts begin to legislate to protect them.There are abundant laws relating to technological measures since 1996 when WIPO passed "the Internet Treaties"(WCT and WPPT) involving technological measures. America and European Union go ahead in both Legislation and judicial practice. American DMCA is a typical act about technological measures. In DMCA, a classical division of technological measures divided into two categories are created: measures that prevent unauthorized access to a copyrighted work and measures that prevent unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work. An ongoing administrative rule-making proceeding which is established in DMCA to deal with non-determinacy from future developments of digital technique is also a good thing worthy to be learned.Technological measures legislation is fairly far from maturity and complement, and many questions need to be researched further and solved in theory and practice. In Part I of this thesis, present situation of international legislation is introduced, then the negative influences that technological measures legislation brings about are analyzed in part II. It can be seen, that the original idea of technological measures legislation is only to protect copyright, but it's action range has exceeded the copyright field. Apart from it's bad influences on traditional principles in copyright field such as Fair Use and First Sale(Exhaustion of Rights), technological measures legislation also demonstrates some unexpected negative effects on other fields, e.g. Civil Rights(Remarks and Academic Freedom), Market Competition, Freedom of Contract and Consumer Protection. Justification of technological measures legislation is discussed emphatically through two different roads in Part III. Theory of property is adopted to demonstrate that the essence of technological measures is the embodiment of that obligees exercise exclusive right to realize the exclusiveness of property rights and to maintain the integrity of property rights, so justification of technological measures legislation is proved at the same time; Economic theory of property is adopted to demonstrate that circumvention of technological measures infringes upon obligees' property rights and that protecting technological measures is significant to copyright system in internet, so justification of technological measures legislation is proved once more at the same time. In partIV, technological measures legislation in China is analyzed, and compared with international legislation. At last, articles of technological measures in Regulations on Protection of Information Network Propagation Rights are discussed, and their deficiencies and suggestions on legislation are pointed out.The new ideas raised in this thesis include the following points: Theory of property is adopted to demonstrate that the essence of technological measures is the embodiment of that obligees maintain the integrity of property rights and realize the exclusiveness of property rights; Economic theory of property is adopted to demonstrate that circumvention of technological measures infringes upon obligees's property rights and that protecting technological measures is significant to copyright system in internet; so conclusions above-mentioned prove the justification of technological measures legislation. Articles of technological measures in Regulations on Protection of Information Network Propagation Rights still exist some deficiencies and improvement suggestions on legislation are submitted.