A Study Of Copyright Infringement Issues On Video-sharing Websites

Video-sharing websites are generally considered as those interactive video services websites on the basis of Web2.0 in IT field. Video-sharing websites were originally conceived to provide information storage space and information release platform for users to upload, watch or download video files to achieve the purpose of resources sharing. The existence of video-sharing websites facilitate users to search for and watch videos anywhere and anytime, which has greatly enriched people's spiritual and cultural demands. However, video-sharing websites are faced with copyright problems since the inception. The copyright issues have become "Sword of Damocles" to the websites developments. The analysis of copyright infringement issues on video-sharing websites aim to provide a reference for judicial practice, and some thoughts to the improvement of legislation and balance the interests of websites servers and copyright holders.The paper is divided into four parts.The first part is an overview of video-sharing websites. First, the concept of video-sharing websites was introduced by the definition of "network video" and "sharing"; then the nature of the video-sharing websites as network intermediary service provider was discussed by the analysis of video-sharing websites operation modes; finally the development of present video-sharing websites was discussed and the possible copyright infringement liability in video-sharing websites services was pointed out.The second part presents the basic theory of copyright infringement of video-sharing websites. In this part, the differences existing in the conditions of video sharing sites copyright infringement liability were firstly discussed from the present increasingly serious network video piracy and the judicial practice; then the paper respectively introduced the two types of video sharing website copyright infringement, the four necessary conditions for video sharing sites infringement liability, the fact of damage, the fact of illegal behaviour, the causation relationship between the two facts, and the subjective fault, and the main forms of the video sharing sites infringement liability. The third part of the paper comparatively studied the legislation on video-sharing websites copyright infringement in the international and domestic community. Legislations on video-sharing websites copyright infringement in the United States, the European Union and China are introduced, and the "Protection Act of Information Network Propagating Right" in China, "The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998" the United States, and the "Electronic Commerce Directive" in the European Union are compared and analysed.The last part has reflected on the issues of video-sharing websites infringement and suggested solutions. Two typical cases sentences are analysed, and my viewpoints on issues such as "the identification of know and should know","the impact of video columns on infringement identification","the identification of the nature of audit","the identification of content change" were put forward. In view of the existing problems, three practical solutions from the aspects of legislative system improvement, filtering technology employment and websites self-regulation were proposed.