The Research Of Tort Liability Of Internet Search Service Providers

As far as the Internet content service provider(ICP)is concerned,uploading and disseminating works without the permissions of the copyright owners will infringe the copyrights of the copyright owners,and they need to bear civil liability for infringment.This is not a controversial point.However,whether the Internet search service providers(IAP)who provide intermediary services such as Internet search engine service providers take on the tort liability is still uncertain.The reason is that China's current laws and regulations doesn't regulate tort liability of the Internet service providers completely or practically,needing to be combined with other provisions for specific use.At the same time,there are problems in the judgment of "subjective fault"."Fault liability system" is presently the basic imputation principle in the tort liability law of our country.For the understanding of the nature of fault,it is sensible for the subjective fault theory to recognize the punishment and educational function of tort liability law.Regulation on the Protection of the Right to Communicate Works to the Public over Information Networks stipulates that in order to obtain the "safe harbor principle",Internet service providers must not know orhave no reasonable reason to know the existence of "piracy".This reflects our concern about the psychological state of the perpetrators,and also our country's absorption of the American "red flag standard".However,we generally believe that as long as the Internet service providers have sorted out the works,they should know the existence of infringement.Due to the increasingly complex network environment and the increasingly large amount of network information,Internet search service providers sometimes need to manually sort and filter search results to better realize their "intermediary" function,so the author believes that the circumstances of liability for tort shall be divided.Through economic analysis,the author refines the "duty of care" to protect the copyright owners and reduce the prevention cost of Internet search service providers,so as to promote the development of social economy.