Empirical Study On The Use Of Electronic Evidence In Internet Copyright Infringement Litigation

With the rapid development of the Internet and technology,intellectual property litigation is increasing day by day,among which copyright disputes stand out,most of which are Internet copyright infringement.Evidence is the core of litigation.In the Internet era,electronic evidence is different from traditional evidence in that it is intangible,professional,objective and stable,easy to copy and easily to be damaged and changed,as well as diversified in its presentation.It is precisely because of these characteristics that it is also unique in Internet copyright infringement litigation.In addition,new requirements have been put forward for the rules of electronic evidence forensics and storage.4790 "Hua Gai cases" series of adjudication documents were used as effective analysis samples of Internet copyright infringement litigation to conduct empirical research on the overall situation of the case and the application of electronic evidence.From the three aspects of confirmation of evidence,tort evidence and damage compensation evidence,it is found that there are some problems in the use of Internet copyright electronic evidence: Firstly,the issue of proof of ownership of electronic evidence confirmation.There are differences in the standard of proof of preliminary evidence,and the confirmation electronic evidence cannot be fully applied to the traditional confirmation evidence rules.Moreover,third-party certificate deposit cannot completely solve the problem of ownership.Secondly,the issues involved in infringing electronic evidence are mainly limited by the traditional way of fixing evidence of electronic evidence,while the third-party deposit of infringing electronic evidence has not been generally approved by the judiciary.Thirdly,it is about the difficulty of the copyright owner in providing evidence of damage compensation evidence,which leads to the generalization of statutory compensation methods.Due to the unreasonable setting of the burden of proof for damage compensation evidence,it is sometimes difficult for the copyright owner to accurately calculate the infringement losses.Based on the analysis of the above problems,corresponding countermeasures and suggestions for improving the use of Internet copyright electronic evidence are proposed from the above three aspects: First,the definition of the preliminary evidence of right confirmation should be stricter.Meanwhile,the third-party electronic storagetechnology should be introduced to prove ownership by combining with "platform plus electronic storage technology".Second,the judicial trial rules for the third-party depository of infringing electronic evidence should be constructed from the following three aspects: following the trial rules of general electronic evidence,recognizing the neutral third-party identity of the third-party depository platform,and paying more attention to the authenticity of the third-party depository of infringing electronic evidence.Thirdly,the burden of proof of the parties should be reasonably distributed.