Study On The Vicarious Liability Of Video Sharing Websites Copyright Infringement

As a professional platform for netizen providing, uploading, publishing videos,video sharing web sites play a significant role on the spread of original works.However, it does propel the cyber infringement. A large amount of works aretransmitted into Internet without authorization and thus severely infringe proper rightsof copyright’s owners. As far as the difference of cyber and reality is concerned, it isdifficult for the infringed to identify infringe because they generally publish videosanonymously. In order to protect their copyright, copyright owners have to choosevideo sharing sites as defendants. Nowadays, those web sites are usually brought tocourt in lots of lawsuits and thus become formidable barriers preventing theirdevelopment. Thus, this paper mainly focuses on the liability of video web sites andconsists of the following four chapters:The first chapter points out the problem of copyright infringement and thebarriers that affects the development of Internet. It mainly includes two parts. The firstpart introduces the concept and legal status of video sharing sites. The second partuses specific statistics to show how video sharing sites was sued for the copyrightinfringement. In the meantime, it discusses the theory of indirect infringement judgesusing to let web sites to burden vicarious liability in those infringement cases. Further,this part discusses if it is proper for applying the vicarious liability to web sites andthe specific standard if it does. The second chapter mainly focuses on the infringement type of video sharingweb sites and the applicability of the vicarious liability in network era. The firstsection briefly explains the circumstances that web sites burden direct liabilities. Thesecond section mainly discusses indirect liabilities, including contributoryinfringement and vicarious liability. In the fields of copyright, vicarious liability wasfounded by the US judge in the case of Shapiro in1963. The third section points outthrough pertinent analysis that vicarious liability is applicable to web site sponsors asthe basis of this application is rational, though vicarious liability is challenged by thenew era of network.The third chapter explains in detail the application standard via the analysis ofrelated cases. The first section introduces the Shapiro case and the two pivot elementsof the application of vicarious liability. That is the control right and ability ofsupervision of infringement and the benefit arising from them. The second sectiondiscusses the two specific standards established in Shapiro. It points out theuncertainty of those standards in the motherland of copyright liability, the UnitedStates. Then, the author points out the vicarious liability shall be subjected by twostandards of " material control" and " established benefit", through the analysis byhimself. Furthermore, the author deem that the balance of copyright owners and website sponsors shall be regarded in judiciary practice and vicarious liability shall beapplied cautiously.The fourth chapter is the conclusion of this paper. It points out that although"The regulation on Protection of the Right to Network Dissemination of Information"is passed by reference of American "DMCA", it is not complete as we are lack of thesame background and judiciary practise as what are in America. It is way too rigid tosubject video sharing web sites to vicarious liability only if they obtain immediateeconomic benefits. Thus, the author proposes some specific suggestions as to thosedefects. Also, based on the author’s analysis, he offer some advises to video sharingweb sites as to their problems of business patterns. He holds that video sharing websites should change their business pattern considering its development in the long run.