On The Unfair Competition Of Video Advertising Shielding Behavior

The abundant Internet resources have greatly facilitated people's lives,so that they can watch their favorite TV programs anytime and anywhere through video websites.However,excessively long video advertisements will cause users' dissatisfaction among,so more and more Internet users tend to apply ad-shielding software to filter video advertisings,which triggered disputes between video site operators and ad-shielding software developers.Among the cases about shielding video advertisings in China,the mainstream view of Chinese judicial authorities consider that the behavior of shielding video advertisings is improper and ad-blocking software developers are considered as unfair competition.Based on discussing the issues such as the competitive relationship between operators and developers,and the multi-interest relations involved in the behavior,this article believes that the behavior of shielding video advertisings neither violates commercial ethics nor threatens the commercial interests of video website platforms.On the contrary,this behavior is justified because it caters to market demand and respects for consumers' choice.The law shall allow the behavior of shielding video advertisings within a certain limit and hand it over to the choice by market competition.The overall idea of this article is as follows: Firstly,starting with Shanghai's typical intellectual property case “Beijing Aiqiyi Technology Co.,Ltd.complains unfair competition of Shenzhen Juwangshi Technology Co.,Ltd.”,the disputed points of the case are summarized and analyzed for exploration;secondly,from comparison perspective,related theories and practices are studied;finally,based on the needs of China's judicial practice,the law application for such cases are proposed.As a summary of the case,the first part analyzes the judgment basis and judgment argumentation in the case of “Beijing Aiqiyi Technology Co.,Ltd.complains unfair competition of Shenzhen Juwangshi Technology Co.,Ltd.”.Meanwhile,it summarizes the controversial focus of video ad-shielding case,which is how to determine the competition relationship between the two parties,how to determine the nature of shielding behavior,and whether it applies the principle of technology neutrality.The second part discusses about scientific principle of law academics,which contains two parts.On the one hand,it discusses the issue of identifying competing relationships underInternet environment.On the other hand,it focuses on how to determine the legitimacy of video ad-shielding behavior.Finally,by means of studying different theories and China's judicial practice,the author concludes that,whether the operators are in competitive relationship depends on their business interests.Video site operators and ad-shielding software developers share the same commercial interests,so they are in competitive relationship.However,ad-shielding software developers have not seriously threatened the commercial interests of video websites or violated business ethics,so the law shall not deny the justification of behavior of shielding video advertisings.The third part proposes the legal application of determining the nature of video ad-shielding in China's judicial practice.The analysis of these cases shows that their judgment argumentation is unclear with a referee thinking of “operator first”.Therefore,this article believes that when determining the nature of video ad-shielding behavior,it is necessary to consider the legal principle,appropriate principle and performance principle,adopt interest measurement method,and determine specific judgment elements by fully considering case characteristics.