A Study On The Wikipedia From Copyright Law Perspective

As a free, open, Shared encyclopedia creation plan, Wikipedia is on the wiki technical basis and takes the network as the creative platform.Since its establishment in 2001, it has become the largest online encyclopedia.Wikipedia has the most language versions, vocabulary entry, participants, editing times and the largest influence.Leading the numerous worldwide Wikipedia creation plan, Wikipedia has become an important channel of knowledge and information.In the copyright law perspective, Wikipedia has two typical features: one is the "peer production" works creation pattern, and another is the public share, open authorized copyright ownership mode.Wikipedia's copyright features brought new challenges to the traditional copyright law: the creators change from "individual" into "group", the creative freedom changes from "relatively limited" into "relative free", the creating incentives changes from "economic incentives" into "multivariate incentives", the copyright ownership changes from "individual ownership" to "public share", the copyright authorized mode changes from "all rights reserved" into "keep some rights".The expansion of copyright and public domain reduction have shaped the "permission culture" of the copyright law, the progress of science and technology expedites fundamental reform of the works creation mode and copyright authorized mode, and it bring new challenges to copyright law,the concept and expectations of "free culture" are also included.The copyright law should not only provide "proper law", but also need to respect and support public participation, and seek the maximization of social public benefits.Based on the "free culture" pursuit and the needs the of interest balance among the copyright owner, communicators, users and public, copyright law needs to change and make timely and appropriate adjustment: first is the typification of special works under the network environment; another is implementation of copyright registration, shorten the protection period and allow the renewal, works marking system under certain conditional, and the third is to encourage the holder of the works directly released copyright into the public domain.