How To Determine Copyright Infringement On Hyperlinking

According to the traditional server standard, only the original uploading of the content protected by the copyright law would constitute the direct infringement of the right of com-munication through information network. With the rapid development of the technology of hyperlinking, hyperlinking, especially framing and download linking, could easily bypass the website that originally provides the protected content and present that exact content to internet users on the linking website, which costs a great amount of damage on the copyright owner of the content. In my opinion, we should reconsider our understanding on the act of communi-cating through information network. By adopting the user standard, the copyright owner would be able to control hyperlinking conducted by the linking provider, thus, restore the fair distribution of benefit between the copyright owner and the distributer and achieve the main goal of the copyright law, which is, to encourage the creation and distribution of good work.There are five main parts in this article. The first part would introduce the two different understanding of the act of communicating through information network. The second part would introduce hyperlinking and conduct a simple analysis on copyright infringement with two different standards. In the third part, I would discuss two different scenarios of infringe-ment and find out that the server standard could only control one scenario, but fail on the second one. In the fourth part, I focus on why we should apply the user standard in order to control hyperlinking. The fifth part would give some advice on how our legal system should alter in order to control hyperlinking.