Research On The Copyright Protection Of Orphan Works

The principle of copyright auto-protection has forced more and more works to become orphan works and their exploitation dilemma is increasingly obvious in the era of web2.0.The UGC works and the AI-generated content have contributed abundant orphan works in new forms and exerted impact on the existing copyright protection pattern for orphan works.The protection of orphan works' copyrights is concerned with several major difficulties in choosing protection pattern,identifying diligent retrieval duties and specifying royalty payment rules.Effective protection could not only balance all stakeholders' interests and reduce transaction cost but also encourage the creation and spread of works and facilitates the further use of works.We need to effectively solve related difficulties to improve the protection of orphan works' copyrights.The protection patterns mainly include compulsory license,statutory license,restricted relief,extended collective management and the combination of franchisor and collective management.China could adopt the dual franchising pattern combining the compulsory license and extended collective management.The diligent retrieval duty usually involves two methods,standardized approach or individual case identification.The former method is recommended to be adopted in China.As for the royalty payment rules,several issues such as royalty payment pattern,royalty payment standards,royalty deposit unit and duration all need to be considered.It is recommended that the royalty of orphan works should be deposited in advance and the royalty submitted should be lower the average market price.The deposit unit is supposed to be the copyright collective management organization within the work-related field and the deposit time could be set to be 5 years.Besides,it is necessary to design and construct a thorough system for protecting the orphan works,complete the regulations about the orphan work copyright protection in the Revised Draft of Copyright Law and formulate Orphan Work Copyright Protection Rules.