The Research Of The Copyright Infringement Liability Of The Search Engine Service

With the complication of the information on the Internet,the role of the information search has been becoming more and more significant in people’s network life. Engine service provider,as one of the network service provider,has indeed provided lots of convenience to people’s daily life in recent years, however, it has also caused numerous of copyright infringement disputes,which mainly reflected in the the fields of the network links infringement and page snapshot infringement.However, these problems remain unsolved in a unified way because of the lack of the relevant laws and regulations. As a result, discussing the legal status of the engine service provider,analysing the behaviour of the infringement and fold the study on the responsibilities of the service provider do have some practical significance.In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion, the paper is divided into four chapters:Chapter Ⅰ:The statement of the search engine services.Starting from the analysis of the principle of the technique of the search engine, then graphic its work process and classify it into kinds. Finally, expanding an initial introduction of the network links and page snapshot,the two main services provided by the search engine provider.Chapter Ⅱ:Copyright infringement analysis of the search engine service provider.This chapter proceed from the analysis of the legal status of the search engine service provider, according to the differences in the service provider’s business areas and specific information services,dividing the search engine service provider into the ICP(Internet Content Providers)and ISP(Internet Service Providers).Then, analysing in detail to the infringement types of the ICP and ISP. On the basis of this,analysing the copyright infringement of the network link and page snapshot. Drawing the conclusion that network link does not constitute an infringement of the exclusive rights of the copyright reproduction rights and the right of network communication, but the establishment of indirect infringement.Chapter Ⅲ:The analysis on the copyright infringement liability of the search engine providers. This chapter mainly discuss the determine of the liability of the search engine service provider, mainly analysing the method to identify the subjective field of infringement,and looking for legitimacy dependence for the network link and page snapshot service provided by the search engine provider. Firstly, analysing the principle of liability of the search engine service provider, concluding that the principle of presumption of fault liability should be applied on the ICP, while ISP should apply the principle of fault liability.Then, analysing the limitation on the responsibility of the network link copyright infringement, then finding the determintion rules for its subjective judgement, from the principle of "safe harbor principle","red flag standard" to"the principle of substantial and non-infringement uses" in order. Finally, analysing the limitation of the liability of the page snapshot copyright infringement, paying the attention to the aspects of "safe harbor principle","fair use"and "implied license",drawing the conclusion that the former two rules do not apply to the web page snapshot,only the implied license system can offer reasons for the limitation of liability on page snapshot.Chapter Four:The suggestion to improve the protection system of the copyright of the search engine in China. In this chapter, three suggestions were put forward in order to improve the protection system of the copyright of the search engine in China, including the legalizaton of the indirect infringement, the introduction of the implied license system and and make a balance between the interests of the search engine service providers and copyright owners.