The Development And Practice Of China’s Copyright Law

China’s first copyright law The Copyright Code of Great Qing Dynasty is 200 years later than the world’s first copyright law The Statute of Anne, which was issued in 1709 in Britain. The law was enacted under the dual function of foreign influenceand domestic pressure in 1910. In spite of the great foreign influence in the formulation, it had made corresponding adaptations on considering the domestic facts. The law with a foundational status in the copyright law history has direct impact on the Copyright Law of Beiyang Government, the Copyright Law of Nanking National Government and the contemporary Copyright Law.The Copyright Code of Great Qing Dynasty, which is mostly influenced by Japan, mainly refers to Japan’s copyright law on the basic problems such as copyright concept and definition. China’s three modern copyright laws have many restrictions on the author’s rights and strong political color, which alienated purpose of the system design. For example, all of the three copyright laws stipulate copyrights must be obtained by registration whose procedures become strict gradually and inconsistent with the international principles; in registration, it regulates that works without conformity to the regulations do not possess copyrights and so on.As a law reflecting the modern copyright protection standard, The Copyright Act in 1990 has relatively advanced principle system regulations, which are consistent with the general international principles. According to the characters of Internet in new era, it also makes some corresponding modifications in combination with the international treaties and domestic facts to create new rights for network dissemination behaviors.Aimed at the copyright laws in the Republic period and contemporary era of China, this thesis enumerates the typical cases of relevant literary works to get a better understanding of their implementation effect and protection level, and summarizes relevant experience to offer help and reference for the later legislation and legal facts.The innovations of this thesis are mainly reflected in the following two points. First, it takes written works copyright as an example to delve into the China’s copyright law. Second, it evaluates and summarizes the characteristics of the China’s copyright law in each phase and then thoroughly analyzes the corresponding copyright by combining with cases.