Research On Administrative Penalty Clauses For Copyright Infringement ——Based On The Identification Of Public Interest Elements

Article 53 of the "Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China" stipulates that administrative organs may impose penalties on eight types of infringements that damage public interests.Comparing with the provisions on civil liability in Article 52,it is concluded that damage to public interests is a prerequisite for punishment.The public interest element has been controversial in legislation,and there is confusion in its application,but it is a necessary premise for public power to intervene in private power,so it cannot be circumvented when it is applied.Therefore,it is worthy to analyze how the public interest elements in the administrative punishment of copyright infringement are explained and applied in all aspects of the practical application process.The first chapter of this article sorts out the emergence and controversy of the public interest elements in legislation.The public interest element first appeared in the Copyright Law when it was revised in 2001,and it caused a lot of controversy during the third revision,but it was eventually retained.On this basis,it analyzes many confusions in the application process caused by the uncertainty of the concept of public interest,and then proposes to analyze the elements of public interest from law enforcement practice and judicial judgment.The second and third chapters analyze how to apply the public interest requirements from the perspectives of law enforcement and justice,respectively.In the practice of law enforcement,the administrative organs have internalized Article 53 of the Copyright Law on the basis of discretion,but the basis of discretion does not involve the specification of the elements of public interest,but is handed over to the administrative organs in the process of specific punishment.Discretion;in the process of punishment,administrative organs mostly avoid explaining the elements of public interest,but from the behaviors that have been punished,four types of behaviors that infringe on public interests and the public interests involved can be summarized.In the judicial judgment part,the KUAIBO case is selected as a typical case,from which the court’s criteria for determining damage to the public interest are summarized.The fourth chapter based on the discussion of public interest in practice in the first three chapters,further responds to the legitimacy and necessity of introducing administrative punishment and public rights in the field of copyright and private rights and the significance of identifying public interest requirements.The elements of public interest need to be judged on basis of the specific circumstances.The concept of public interest is uncertain,and there is no uniformity in how to apply the elements of public interest in practice.Administrative discretion as an internal guide leaves the discretion of the public interest element to the administrative agency to handle on a case-by-case basis.Most of the administrative organs make punishments under the circumstance of evading the interpretation of the elements of public interest,so from the cases that have been punished,the types of behaviors that will be identified as harming the public interest in practice are summarized.The criteria for determining the public interest can be summarized from court cases to guide practice.The research on the identification of the public interest elements in the copyright field can also provide a certain reference for the standard definition of public power intervening in private rights in the general sense.