Legal Regulations Of Ad-blocking On The Internet

The overflow of Internet advertising leads to the emergence of Internet ad-blockers,which damage the interests of website owners.So far,almost all of China's judge determine that Internet ad-blocking is unjustified,and scholars have not reached consensus on the legal nature of Internet ad-blocking.This paper argues that there is a lack of legal basis for the regulating Internet ad-blocking in China.The second article of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law is principled,resulting in different evaluation criteria for Internet ad-blocking,weak sanction,and unconvincing.The Copyright Law does not clarify the concept of rights holders of technical measures.The court unequivocally determined the ad-blocking as an unfair competition behavior without analyzing their technical principles.The second article of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law needs to be analyzed from the perspective of whether it violates commercial ethics.Since there is no uniform standard in commercial ethics,judges often apply industry conventions or the subjective form of actors as a reference for commercial ethics.Obviously,it is hard to be convinced.In addition,China's court pays too much attention to the interests of website owners but fails to give the interests of consumers enough attention.In contrast,the court of foreign major countries always balance the interests of website owners and consumers and pay more attention to the interests of consumers.And the opinion that the judiciary should carefully intervene in the market is also worth being learned.In fact,not all Internet ad-blocking is unfair.The technical principles of Internet ad-blocking mainly include technical means to bypassing advertisements,blocking data requests to replying to advertisements,and establishing a secure virtual private network.Technical means to bypassing advertising is a circumvention of video sites' technical measure that is used to restrict users from directly accessing content,which should be regulated by the special provisions of technical measures in the Copyright Law.The others still need to be analyzed with the "targeted + preset logic function + induced propaganda" model.China should refine the general provisions,and clarify the standards of commercial ethics,and make judicial interpretations of the right holders of technical measures stipulated in the Copyright Law.And the court should hear the case according to the technical principles,pay more attention to the interests of consumers,dialectically treat the loss of the interests of the website owners,and apply the Copyright Law to regulate on the corresponding Internet ad-blocking.This paper uses empirical analysis,case analysis and data statistics to discuss the problems of China's legal regulation on Internet ad-blocking with its technical principle,and draws on the experience of judicial cases of major foreign countries to propose suggestions for improvement of China's judgments.The legal nature of Internet ad-blocking can be evaluated from the perspective of its technical principle and applied the Copyright Law for regulation.Our court should give added weight to interests of comsumers.