The Research On Judicial Protection Of The Network Copyright In China

As a new type of copyright, the network copyright refers to a series of exclusiverights with regard to literature,artistic and scientific works in the network environment,which is owned by the copyright owners or the related holders.Compared with thetraditional copyright,the network copyright has some unique features such as greatlyreduced specificity, disappearing territoriality,digitalized form of works and thedifficulty of application of the doctrine of first sale. Nowadays, with the widepopularity of the Internet,there are more and more torts and disputes about thenetwork copyright,and the types of cases also become more complicated. As a result,itraises a huge challenge to the judicial protection of copyright. Therefore,improvingthe system of the judicial protection of network copyright is of greatsignificance,helping to safeguard the legitimate rights and the common interests of thesociety and to promote the prosperity and development of cultural undertakings.For the network copyright, China has promulgated and implemented a series oflaws and regulations，and issued a train of judicial interpretations in civil、criminaland administrative aspects, which provide certain legal basis for judicial protection.However, due to the dispersion and lag of relevant laws, and the relevant incompleteand unsystematic researches, many problems arise in network copyright cases,especially in the process of judicial protection on this kind of civil cases, such asmost cases are under the jurisdiction of the intermediate people’s court and theterritorial jurisdiction rules are not so reasonable which result in high litigation costsand lower judicial efficiency; it`s difficult for obligee to obtain and present evidenceby adapting the general rules of burden of proof in litigation, which against rightsprotection; applying fault responsibility principle only and the deficiencies of safeharbor rule make it difficult for obligee to pursue legal responsibilities in time andsafeguard their rights. Besides, the relevant laws lack punitive damages and the legalcompensation standard is not so reasonable, so the network copyright infringementcost is low, and the infringement acts couldn’t be effectively inhibited. On the basis ofexposition of the legal theory of the network copyright and the judicial protectionstatus and by adopting the theoretical and empirical analysis methods, this paper put forward some suggestions on completing the judicial protection system of networkcopyright, to solve the above problems and the insufficiency of laws from severalaspects, such as improving the judicial jurisdiction rules and the proof rules,perfecting the damage compensation system and the imputation system.