Research On The Copyright Infringement Liability Of The Video-sharing Sites

With the continuous development of Internet technology,various kinds of digital productscanbe widely spread throughout the Internet. Since the emergence of the very first video-sharing website Youtube in2005, video-sharing websites, due to characteristics such as originality and interactivity, have been developing rapidly and spreading globally. In our country, video-sharing websites share the same rapid development. Various types of video-sharing websites join the Internet one after another, hence many famous video-sharing websites emerged, such as Youku, Tudou Video etc. Nonetheless,with the further development of video-sharing websites benefiting numerous users intheir daily lives, constant occurrence of copyright infringement disputes has huge impacts on the copyright owners, which leads to an unprecedented challenge to the development of video-sharing websites. In the new wave of revolutionary development of Internet technology, it becomes a significant topic to balance the benefits among video-sharing websites, Internet users and relevant copyright owners, to adequately protect the copyrights of their owners while ensuring Internet users’ throughout acquisition of information with Internet resources, and to assure the healthy and continuous development of video-sharing websites. In order to tackle such problem, we must dig deep tounderstand the copyright infringement related difficulties encountered by video-sharing websites in the process of their technology development, and to analyze and study the legal issues in copyright infringement in the Internet world. Therefore, this paper contemplates to analyze copyright infringement liabilities born by video-sharing websites. Apart from the introduction section, this paper is divided into five chapters:The introduction section, as the elaboration of the background knowledge, is mainly about the concept and orientation of video-sharing websites, aiming to differentiate relevant concepts. The first chapter introduces the concept and types of copyright infringement liabilities for video-sharing websites, dividing copyright infringement liabilitiesinto direct infringement liabilities and indirect infringement liabilities, and mainly analyzing the rules and specific presentation of two types of copyright infringement liabilities; the second chapter studies direct infringement for video-sharing websites, defines direct infringement by studying the provisions of our country’s relevant laws, and analyzes the possible existence of video-sharing websites’ direct infringement in relationto their specific business operation situations; the third chapter studies indirect infringement liability of video-sharing websites, with the presumption of subjective fault of the video-sharing websites, the construction of contributory infringement, and the anal ysis of relevant duties and responsibilities; the forth chapter studies the exemption ofcopyright infringement liabilities of video-sharing websites, interpreting relevant exemption provisions in relation to international legislation experience and our country’sjudicial reality; the fifth chapter provides suggestions to perfect infringement liabilities of video-sharing websites and raises measures to solve copyright infringement disputes, by combining business operation characteristics of video-sharing websites and domestic and international legal practice experience.