A Study On Infringement And Copyright Protection Of The WeChat App

With the improvement of its function and the increasing of its number of users, WeChat has become a mobile internet product that changes our daily life by being a simple communication tool. However, copyright infringement comes along with the improvement of WeChat, making copyright issue a barrier on its way of sustainable development.Although the copyright of WeChat has been studied both in academic field and practice, it has not been solved thoroughly. Even for research activities in journalism and communication, this issue is mainly discussed on three subjects, i.e., possibility to obtain copyright, confirmation of responsibility in right infringement cases on WeChat and legislative proposal for copyright protection. And consequently, there is a gap for promoting information sharing, balancing the interests of copyright owner, WeChat user and the WeChat platform as well as protecting the copyright. Therefore, based on the idea of encouraging information spreading and sharing, accelerating the development of digital publication, this thesis takes on real cases of tort liability in right infringement on WeChat and similar platforms, and discusses the essence of information communication, tort liability, potential solutions and measures to protect copyright on WeChat platform, from the perspective of publishing science.Based on the development of WeChat and available study of WeChat and similar network platform, this thesis raises questions of emerging and legal fact of WeChat. According to information dissemination mechanism, this thesis defines the copyright infringement issues into three types i.e., point-to-point communication, point-to-multipoint communication and multipoint-to-multipoint communicaiton, and figures out that infringement problems caused by individual and public users are reflected in different ways.Regarding copyright, several protecting solutions have been implemented, while digital copyright infringement has never been properly or totally eliminated. This thesis strives to find the key point of solving infringement related issues from dual pespective of legislation and publishing. Essentially, the key point of these issues is to balance information sharing and copyright protection, or to balance public policy and individual rights. Concerning the difficulties of WeChat copytight protection, this thesis tries to provide constructive suggestions solutions from the perspect of information dissemination and sharing to improve the legal systm, strengthen the governmental role, broaden awareness of copyright, import Creative Commons, introduce whole-process technical intervention and create flexible copyright operating modes, etc.