Research On Copyright Problems Of Second-Hand Market Of Digital Publications

With Internet’s progress the digital publishing industry has had a mushroom growth, which is in compliance with people’s needs. And the second-hand market of digital publication is in head way. But there are two different answers in US and EU for whether acknowledge its legal status or not. This article mainly quotes ReDigi case, which is a typical case about second-hand market of digital publication. This case raises some copyright problems about second-hand market of digital publication, such as temporary reproduction, online publishing and application of exhaustion-of-rights doctrine.At first, contemporary reproduction is always a highly controversial topic. What’s the legal character of contemporary reproduction? Whether it’s a kind of infringement or not and when it becomes a kind of infringement? Answers for these questions are very important to acknowledge the legal statue of second-hand market of digital publication. Secondly, the application of exhaustion-of-rights doctrine is based on that online publishing belongs to action of publishing in copyright. After viewing of many cases, the US and EU both acknowledge the fore-mentioned problem. Thirdly, after confirming the online publishing’s legal status, the key to conformability of infringement is the application of exhaustion-of-rights doctrine. Because it will exonerate the supplier of second-hand market. In ReDigi case, the judge said no and the reason is that users get music files, which are uploaded to Internet illegally and it isn’t the original file. All these lead to denying of exhaustion-of-rights doctrine’s application. But this article disagrees with it. The point is different understandings of contemporary reproduction and exhaustion-of-rights doctrine.All studies about these problems are made to offer reference to China. There are still no formal provisions about contemporary reproduction and online publishing, which is bad for juridical practice. And second-hand market of digital publishing will grow continually, many cases will arise, so it’s better for us to get ready by making the copyright law more meticulous and precise.