Who will catch the copyright assassin?

@新 新 新

Author 丨 Li Lili

Edit 丨 Monthly

In 1710, the British royal family agreed to sign the Queen Anne Act, and the first modern copyright law was born.

Prior to this, the content market did not have the concept of copyright, and some were to protect the publisher's publishing rights and print privileges.

Similar to today's Internet platform, the publishers at that time made a lot of money by not being created by their own creation. Until the birth of the Queen Annie Act, the regulations composed of about 2,500 vocabulary identified a far -reaching thing for the modern copyright system: the income generated by the work is directly linked to the creator, not just a tool for publishers to make profits Essence

From the current perspective, the first copyright protection method is rough and ideal. It assumes that the creative subject clearly traceable, the work can balance public welfare and private benefits, and rights protection is to protect the work of the work ...

More than 300 years later, these vague areas happened to form the current situation of Tan Qiao: as a founding member, did he have the copyright of "Tan Tan Traffic"? Does public welfare -based communication work constitute infringement? Is the right to compensate for litigation instead of the rights protection of the work?

In fact, Tan Qiao's encounters today into the entire content market, and Internet content creators have a probability of facing the ubiquitous "copyright hunting order".

The pictures that are not marked with the source, the paid music provided by the third -party software, and some accustomed fonts or patterns, etc. In the digital age, these copyright subjects with unclear and unclear use of standards have become " Damoris's sword "and endure attacks from" copyright hooligan "at any time.

01 Is your creation infringement?

"Copyright Rogue" is a branch of "intellectual property hooligan". Typical characteristics include non -copyright implementation subjects, filed copyright infringement lawsuits against others, and complaints to profit is its only purpose [1].

Jia Bing is the principal of a financial website. In the last week of June, he received three infringement notices from three different institutions. The maximum of 258 infringement information is added, which can be traced back to 2015. At least one infringement book, there are also two pictures that were informed, and these two pictures were released in 2016.

"The amount of compensation is 10,000 for each picture. These three institutions are the same as discussing." In order to minimize the loss, Jia Bing obeyed the website of the lawyer's suggestion to shut down the operation for three years.

In fact, according to the standards for litigation of intellectual property rights, if no more than 10,000 yuan of litigation bids, each target pays 50 yuan for litigation fees. In other words, these three companies that advocate infringements have required top prosecution for compensation with the lowest prosecution fee. This is also a common means of litigation of batch rights protection companies.

According to the information provided by Jia Bing, one of them claimed to be the main photography service in the registered company's registration information. The investigation of the company showed that there were 223 cases involved in the two years. Chengdu Tourism Culture Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Chengdu Tourism), which was complained to Tan Tan Traffic, also includes more than a dozen Internet such as Huawei, iQiyi, B Station, Quick Hand, Byte Beat, etc. The big factory sued the court.

On the Chinese referee document network, a total of 333,700 documents were retrieved by the "violation of the dispute over the communication right of the work information network". The latest penalties involved in Hanhua Yimei (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. and Beijing Huasi Juju Co., Ltd. have thousands of infringement litigation cases.

Faced with a well -known professional protection team with a sound system and proficient in business, the complaints were almost unable to fight, and they could only lose money. Compared with "explicit" materials such as video and pictures, some "invisible" "copyright assassins" are even more invincible.

After Liu Yu cleared up a batch of videos in the night, he still had a lot of heart. "Don't exaggerate, scare a cold sweat."

She has been operating a corporate account for three years. She thinks that it is the "old fritters" of the Internet. The video script lens to the picture of the pictures released is not careful. Font.

Until one day, I received a notice from the leader and asked to check the operation of the promotion material. Out of careful consideration, she inquired about the use of the use of a editing software before discovering that the "default black body" could not be used in business.

"Public release, the consequences are at your own risk. It is really the defendant and can only be acknowledged. If you can't deal with the lawsuit, it is one aspect. The commercial account must involve a lot of cooperation promotion. In case the customer knows this mistake, it is difficult to reach cooperation. Think that the content is so unprofessional. "

Liu Yu's worry is not unreasonable. In 2019, Lu Songsong's blog received the "font infringement letter" from the Hanyi font library. The font was mixed after downloading the "free font website" in batches.

Common fonts such as Song, Black Sites, Kai, and Microsoft Yahei in office software are suspected of infringement once it involves commercial use. Often the explanation of "free download" of the font website is vague, and users accidentally become infringers.

Avoiding the "invisible" element does not mean that the high pillow is not worried. The different copyright scope of the platform may also make the work possibility of infringement.

"The video edited by Douyin software was uploaded to Xiaohong's book and was complained after being uploaded." The person in charge of an art training institution told "New Entropy" about what has been encountered in the near future. "The reason for the complaint is to use a background music that can only be used on Douyin. Later, some people said that not only music, but also some fonts and patterns provided by the shelter can only be used in the vibrato ecology. Tips, you can only rely on everyone's mouth to continue to explore. "02 sleeping copyright, active rights protection

For a long time, the Chinese Internet piracy is rampant, providing a hotbed for development for the "copyright assassin" that is now everywhere.

With the many material libraries of the banners such as "free", "open source", "sharing", the subtext that has not been spoken is: individual use. This means that when the platform is published on the platform (whether or not it is for business purposes), the moment the Enter key was pushed down, the creator entered a ten -sided ambush.

After the "back thorn", many companies and individuals understand the law of survival of the Internet childhood: free of charge is the most expensive.

More often, infringement disputes will also be considered to be caused by weak copyright awareness of Chinese people, and insufficient and excess are actually two sides of copyright protection.

As early as 2018, Zhang Ying, founding management partner of Jingwei China, posted a Weibo to criticize the business model of a domestic company: developed a system, organized a large -scale search for unauthorized neglect to neglect the various companies using their pictures, and then the sky was full of sky If the price is not deleted, it will directly ask for the sky -high compensation.

Zhang Ying said at the end of the text, "Wait, one day ..." But four years later, this business model was more "mature" and bloomed everywhere.

According to Phoenix.com, the "more than 10,000 machines operate in SOC autologous system daily in SOC autologous systems", and "a daily monitoring of nearly one million minutes of big data" can shorten the original copyright infringement claims process that was not as short as one year. Within 8 months.

Large -scale rights protection needs also gave birth to the upstream and different categories of the entire network detection business. Some small technology companies have developed detection systems such as music, images, videos, texts, software code, and applied for patents.

This means that in the future where the business model of batch rights protection is still feasible, the ambitions of the "copyright assassins" will not be limited to litigation to the entity of the enterprise. In the strict testing of the network, every move on the Internet will face greater greater movements. The risk of infringement.

According to Qianjiang video reports, cases related to font infringement increased by 29.4%year -on -year in 2020, and a 10057.89%increase in 2011, which is equivalent to 100 times the number of domestic font infringement cases in the past 10 years.

Behind the growth of the number of cases, it is difficult to say that there is no wave of "copyright assassins". Because this is obviously a "scale effect" business.

For the "copyright assassin" as the plaintiff in the lawsuit, they usually bring a small company to a "small test cattle knife". Once they win, in the mainland law system, they can accumulate more and more With rich experience in litigation defense, the British and American Marine Law Department will also support a precedent judgment.

Once you are familiar with two times, relying on similar evidence chains and defense strategies, "copyright assassins" can send thousands of small and micro enterprises to the defendant, greatly increasing profit opportunities.

With reference to the development of the US Copyright Law, this is almost the same thing that repeats the phenomenon of US vulnerability. In 2013, statistics from the US courts show that in the case they tried, the "copyright hooligan" was initiated by ordinary users, and the proportion of 43%in all copyright infringement cases reached 43%. This number rose to 46%again [2].

To this day, even if European and American countries have introduced the "sheltering principle" and the "three strikeouts out of the bureau" system to combat malicious lawsuits, they still inevitably raised copyright giant beasts such as Gao Zhi invention and VRINGO.

03 "Copyright Dilemma" still has no solution

The members of the parliament of the Queen Annie's Act will not think that the modern copyright system has woven the large network of protecting the author, not only the pirated printing owners. In the creative environment of the trap, everyone is a "bird of shock."

On the one hand, companies that make a profit -making company make a lot of money. On the other hand, the original works of niche personal works cannot be effectively protected, and the cost of rights protection is high.

Unlike professional rights protection, for individuals or small groups, whether it is to keep the original work complete the copyright registration or collect infringement evidence to submit illegal profits, they face higher costs and long cycles.

The strict and complicated copyright system inadvertently increased the threshold for rights protection, and left the organizational space for professional rights protection. For example, it was both integrated and containing the opposite tail snake, and the construction and destruction existed at the same time.

This obviously runs counter to the original intention of protecting copyright. The beginning of the "Copyright Law" states that the purpose of legislation is to protect legitimate rights and interests and encourage creative communication. But now the first half of the sentence is deeply rooted in people's hearts, but the last half of the sentence has made the creators mixed.

The extensive thinking brought by the "Tan Tan Traffic" incident is where is the creative boundary of the Internet? Numerous cases brought greater discussions while clarifying the border.

Film and television commentary UP main valley Amo, because of the form of "X -minute watching movies", was sued in court by five companies including Disney. Do we controversial the work to the work of the work?

The game anchor PDD was claimed by the copyright company for 100,000 yuan because of singing "Borrowing Five Hundred Years of the Sky" in the live broadcast room. "Tan Tan Traffic" was sentenced to the first case. From the results, Chengdu's surgery victory over the case, and the public account of a company in Xiamen was reproduced for a mixed video and was sentenced to 1500 yuan. Some media revealed that the corporation of being sentenced was not convinced to prepare to appeal. This time, the qualifications and means of rights protection companies have become the focus of controversy.

It is worth noting that the court considers the situation of litigation of lawyers entrusted by the Chengdu Tourism Company and adopted the "as appropriate compensation" plan. Perhaps the court also believes that this kind of rights protection is poor.

The consideration is not the "public welfare work should be open to the whole people" that Tan Sir emphasized, but how the work enters the transmission environment, how to balance the interests and public interests of the copyright owner. Because it is too concerned about private interests and insufficient attention to public interests, it is also considered an abuse of intellectual property.

Paradoxically, the abuse of copyright rights does not belong to the category of complaints, that is, there is no blame to chase the obvious "copyright assassin" behavior. The extensive discussion of infringement cases has brought about the improvement of copyright awareness, but it has not solved the dilemma of the creator.

After shutting down the website, Jia Bing lost confidence in all the picture websites. At the same time, he set up his own gallery while reducing the frequency of the post. There is a little bit. "

Liu Yu plans to resign from the operation and prepare to open his account with the experience of rolling. "It really doesn't work, and you can also teach some operations how Xiaobai avoids the pit. If you suffer more, it is an expert. In fact, everyone is infringing.

The original intention of the establishment of the copyright system is not complicated, and the legislators hope that human civilization can better develop on the basis of predecessors. Ideally, after a few years, the knowledge became civilized, entered the human public domain, and naturally became free things.

In this process, works are circulating, creation, and complex games will never end.

(In the text, Jia Bing and Liu Yu are all pseudonyms)

Reference materials:

"Research on the Legal Regulations of Online Copyright Abuse Behavior", Sun Tong, South China University of Technology

"The Birth of the Queen of the Queen of Annie: From Privilege to Copyright" Song Huixian, China Copyright Protection Center

"Excessive expansion of the German Copyright Law-Some Fragmented Thoughts on the Information Law" Thomas Huallen, Han Tong, the University of Ministry of Law, Germany, and the School of Law School of the University of Social Sciences

"Responsibility Analysis and Regulations on the Second Creation of Network Information Platform" Han Ruicong, Journalism and Communication of Shanghai School of Political Science and Law

Matthew sag, Copyright Rolling, an empirical study, 100 iowa l.rev.1105 (2015)

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