Responsibility Of Copyright Infringing Video Sharing Site

The rapid development of Internet has deeply changed people’s lives. Now, it has been a daily habit of enjoying movies and TV plays through the network. Because of the people’s hope for searching videos quickly and easily, the video-sharing websites were built up. And the video-sharing websites are becoming more and more popular because of their plenty of video resources and efficient network operation. But in recent years, the video-sharing websites have been frequently involved in copyright infringement lawsuit, which is a huge damage to develop the industry. Different people of the society have paid great attentions on this issue. In order to deal with the suit, the video-sharing websites usually use safe harbor rules to protect their own rights. However, in the academic and judicial practice, there are still extensive discussions on how to determine video-sharing websites’legal liabilities, especially on how to understand rightly and apply properly of safe harbor rules.The video-sharing websites are a kind of network service provider which are mainly providing information storage service. The object of tort relationship is the right of information network transmission. According to the fault principle of tort liability, the video-sharing websites should mainly take the responsibility of indirect infringement liability as an ISP, unless the video-sharing websites change the content of the video uploaded by the user. Then the video-sharing websites should take the responsibility of direct infringement liability as an ICP. In judicial practice, as the exemption clause, the safe harbor rules are the most important rules on deciding whether the video-sharing websites should assume responsibility or not. On the issue of the validity of safe harbor rules, the rules contain five exemption clauses and these clauses are unnecessary for the video-sharing websites to avoid taking responsibility. If the video-sharing websites meet all the five exemption clauses, they will be inevitable exemption. If the video-sharing websites don’t meet all the clauses, they have to be determined by the general elements of tort liability. On the issue of the judgment standard of subjective fault, the video-sharing websites should not take the initiative to review the more supervisory control obligation, only need to make a reasonable duty of care. But the duty of care should be much higher when the videos are popular films and televisions with higher visibility or the websites have their own movie sections or classification. On the issue of the application of notice and delete rule, the format requirement of effective infringement notice should be flexible and the legal effect of unqualified notice should be definite. As the exception to the safe harbor rules,"red flag standards" refers to the situation on that the video-sharing websites have to take the tort liability. On the issue of the cognizance of the red flag, it should be judged from two aspects:the nature of works and the nature of websites. To solve the focus problems on the video-sharing websites’copyright infringement liability in our academic research and judicial application, my proposals mainly involve following aspects:the establishment of indirect tort liability system, the system perfection of the safe harbor rules, the establishment of the network collective management system of copyright and the unified video filtering technology.