From The Open Source To See The Innovation Of Copyright Regime

As Microsoft continues dominating the operating system industry, many consumershave started to shift their focus to other alternatives such as Open Source Software, alsoknown as free software. Rather than charging consumers, Open Source Software makesthe original source code accessible to everyone. The primary objective is to accelerate thegrowth of the software industry.The United States of America initiated protecting computer software under CopyrightAct, and this movement has made many other countries follow the same path. However,supporters of Open Source argued that software should not be protected under copyrightsbecause they believe that software liberty is only possible when the source code can bereleased to everyone. All the hard work they’ve done has proved that computer softwarecan still help to better the culture of technology when it was not protected by copyrights.Thus, it is necessary to reevaluate and restructure the copyright regime. In this paper, Iwill analyze the copyright issues caused by the open source through the following threeparts:First of all, the first part introduces the emergence and development of the opensource and the open source license and makes us have a preliminary understanding of thisnew thing. And then, the paper explains the important terms of the GPL license, which isselected as the object of this paper to lay the foundation for the further analysis.The second part discusses the impact on the copyright regime caused by the opensource from the theoretical level and specific aspects of legal system. It demonstrates theemergence of the open source challenges the legitimacy of the existing copyright regimefrom four aspects, which are justification, legislative purpose, values and rules. The paperfollows the main line of right and elaborates the influence on China’s copyright regimewhich caused by the open source software from copyright’s acquisition, subject, contentand limitations.The third part is the conclusion of this paper. Firstly, through examining the EuropeanUnion, the United States, Japan and the open source organization’s attitudes and measures,it proposes that we shall establish the copyright regime in line with international practice according to our actual conditions. Then, it proposes how to improve our copyright regimein the new technological world, with a response to the issues raised in the second part.