"Finance Headlines" App is not authorized to reprint articles to earn traffic, delete links, and follow expert analysis
Deleting the link cannot be an infringement "free of order"
● Unauthorized reprinting of original media content, and deleting the link "disappearing" after earning traffic is a common phenomenon at present
● Deleting the link to avoid responsibility does not deny the fact that it disseminates infringing content or infringing works, so it cannot exempt the perpetrator from the infringement liability, but in practice, we should pay attention to the subjective status of the deleter
● Chain deletion to avoid liability is the objective manifestation of the destruction of evidence of direct infringement by the infringer after unauthorized reprinting. Since the directly infringing page has been deleted, it is necessary to make more preparations for rights protection than general unauthorized reprinting in order to complete the evidence chain and provide more sufficient grounds for litigation
□ Our reporter Han Dandong
□ Liang Chen, an intern of our newspaper
Recently, according to a media tea party report, the "Financial Toutiao" app reprinted a total of 4178 articles from 9 member units including the Financial Times, China Banking and Insurance News, China Business News, and Economic Observer without the authorization of the alliance member units. The links to some of the reprinted articles have been deleted. When the link is clicked again, the article cannot be opened.
A reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" learned that in order to promote media integration and strengthen intellectual property protection, the China Financial Media Copyright Protection Alliance and member units have in-depth cooperation in copyright protection and content dissemination. The alliance technology platform uses blockchain and other technologies to provide Members’ original content is uniquely identified and protected by certificates. At the same time, the platform’s big data capabilities are used to monitor the content dissemination of the entire network to help members quickly find clues of infringement.
According to Zou Ren, secretary-general of the Copyright Protection Alliance of China’s Financial Media, at present, according to preliminary statistics from the technical department of the Copyright Alliance, among the 4178 articles mentioned above, the Alliance has only recorded and collected evidence for 318 articles this year, because other links are no longer available. opened.
In fact, unauthorized reprinting of original media content and deleting links after earning traffic "disappears" is a common phenomenon at present.
According to Zou Ren's analysis, some large websites and apps now use chain deletion methods to evade accountability, because they are very clear that at present the court requires who advocates and who provides evidence, and right holders must fix evidence if they want to defend their rights. After all, the main energy of traditional media is In terms of propaganda reports, it is impossible to monitor and immediately fix the evidence at any time. They have made it more difficult to defend rights by playing this "time gap," which discouraged many media.
Chain deletion avoidance is widespread
Cannot be exempted from tort liability
From the monitoring data of the alliance’s technology platform, in addition to the "Financial Toutiao" app, dozens of member units of the Copyright Alliance have tens of thousands of suspected infringement links every week. Most of the infringing units are various websites, apps, and WeChat public number.
According to Fang Qi, head of the Technical Department of the China Financial Media Copyright Protection Alliance, the financial content is particularly the case. Some websites and apps have a large number of reprints and subsequent deletion of links and pages. They use crawler technology to automatically grab the content they need from alliance members, such as media official websites, e-news, and WeChat platforms. Through this low-cost method, they can quickly aggregate and display them on their own platforms to attract traffic within the news statute period. Then delete the link.
According to Sun Zhifeng, a partner in charge of the Intellectual Property Department of Beijing Zhuowei Law Firm, on the one hand, Internet information dissemination is complex, extensive and fast. In most cases, Internet information publishers realize tangible or intangible through internal communication. The benefit lies not in the length of time the content is disseminated, but in the spread of the content within a short period of time; on the other hand, the current judicial practice still needs to rely on evidence preservation. The true right holder of the content, such as the copyright holder of the work, must be protected by the premise Provide relevant evidence preserved.
Sun Zhifeng said: “Based on this, after disseminating infringing content or others’ works, deleting the link within a short period of time achieves the publisher’s purpose of accumulating a large amount of popularity or gaining other illegal benefits by disseminating infringing content or infringing works, and it can also achieve a considerable degree. It avoids the risk of the right holder’s evidence preservation and then protects the rights, and the operation is simple, which has been imitated by many infringers."
According to Sun Zhifeng, deleting the chain to avoid liability does not deny the fact that it disseminates infringing content or infringing works, so the perpetrator cannot be exempted from infringement liability. Moreover, deleting the chain and avoiding responsibility itself can indicate that the perpetrator is knowing that the dissemination is illegal, the dissemination is an infringing work, still disseminating, and is trying to evade legal liability. From another perspective, it can prove that the person has intentional infringement or even malice. If there is evidence that the perpetrators are automatically deleted in large numbers, on a large scale, or using technical means, then it should constitute a malicious infringement, and the relevant judgment rules on malicious infringement can be applied.
"But in practice, attention should be paid to the subjective status of the actor who deleted the chain and avoids responsibility. For example, the actor spreads without knowing the content infringement beforehand, and then discovers that it is an infringement and deletes the chain. Then it should not be considered as a malicious infringement. For this point , The burden of proof lies with the accused infringers, who should provide evidence to support their claims.” Sun Zhifeng said.
According to Wang Zhengzhi, a lawyer at Gao Wen Law Firm, the act of deleting articles after obtaining traffic not only does not exempt the infringement liability, but should also increase its liability in accordance with the law.
According to Wang Zhengzhi, first of all, in terms of behavioral effects, although the relevant articles were deleted afterwards, their reprinting behavior was enough to make them "get for nothing" and obtain traffic data; secondly, from the perspective of infringement performance, if Through the crawler program, the content data of the original party is automatically obtained and stored in its own database. The behavior of periodically deleting after batch reprinting is verified to be true, then its behavior has the characteristics of malicious infringement, repeated infringement, and large-scale infringement; finally, in accordance with the Supreme People's Court The "Opinions on Several Issues Concerning the Implementation of the National Intellectual Property Strategy", as well as the Intellectual Property Trial Guiding Opinions issued by many places, should not only not exempt copyright infringements from malicious infringement, repeated infringement, and large-scale infringement, but also according to law increase the punlishment.
Chain deletion increases the cost of rights protection
Reluctantly tolerate and let it go
So, what are the general responsibilities for unauthorized reprinting of others’ articles?
In this regard, Sun Zhifeng said that if someone else’s article is a work, the unauthorized reprinting of someone else’s article is an act of infringement of the copyright of the work, especially the infringement of the information network dissemination right of the work. According to the provisions of the Copyright Law, it shall bear the responsibility to stop the infringement, eliminate the impact For civil liabilities such as compensation for losses, relevant administrative agencies may also impose penalties of confiscation of illegal gains, fines, and even related infringing tools and equipment under investigation and punishment according to law. If it constitutes a crime, it should also bear criminal responsibility.
In Wang Zhengzhi's view, if the infringer ignores or continues to reprint or reprint multiple times without authorization after being notified of the infringement facts, and the subjective intention is obvious, it can be determined that it constitutes a serious act in the Copyright Law. Because this kind of behavior not only infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of copyright owners, but also damages the order of the market economy and the fair competition environment, and constitutes damage to the public interest.
Sun Zhifeng believes that the premise of taking responsibility for infringement of copyright in the chain of deletion is that unauthorized reprinting and dissemination of other people’s works are the premise of avoiding responsibility for chain deletion when the infringer knows that the unauthorized reprinting is illegally disseminated. A means of circumventing legal responsibility deliberately using artificial intelligence or human resources.
In Wang Zhengzhi's view, deleting the chain to avoid responsibility is an objective manifestation of the destruction of evidence of direct infringement by the infringer after unauthorized reprinting. Since the directly infringing page has been deleted, it is necessary to make more preparations for rights protection than general unauthorized reprinting in order to complete the evidence chain and provide more sufficient grounds for litigation.
Wang Zhengzhi suggested that, first, in the preparation of evidence, if the copyright owner has taken prior monitoring and preventive technical measures, the infringement can be traced and evidence collected; secondly, after the infringing page is deleted, the snapshot of the page in the search engine can often be retained. For a period of time, when collecting evidence, you should check the snapshot status of the infringement page and not miss any clues; in addition, you should pay attention to collecting the past infringement history of the infringer to support the infringement motive and the subjective viciousness of the infringement; finally, if the infringement is clear If the infringer has the identity of the infringer and the infringer has continuous infringement, the right holder can conduct dynamic evidence collection without rushing to the ground. The available methods include manual retrieval and collection of evidence and technical measures to dynamically monitor and collect evidence.
A reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" learned that currently, the technical department of the Copyright Alliance has carried out technical upgrades to the evasion methods used by infringers, focusing on and real-time monitoring of those apps or websites that have malicious infringements. As long as the link appears, it will be recorded immediately. , Collect evidence to ensure that no infringing links are missed.
“I’ve just started to adopt this approach. Whether it’s effective depends on the effectiveness of future rights protection.” Zou Ren said, “In addition, in the face of a large number of infringement links, although the alliance cooperates with many law firms, the workload is too large. The process is cumbersome, and now the court requires a single article to be filed, and the newspaper can only claim the rights as the plaintiff, and each manuscript is awarded according to the manuscript fee payment standard of 80 yuan to 300 yuan per thousand words, making rights protection extremely difficult This is also one of the reasons why many rights holders choose to be patient and let it go."
Fang Qi added that the alliance provides clues to member units at the first time by improving technical capabilities, and assists in obtaining evidence and subsequent necessary legal support. In addition, through technological empowerment, the alliance can better provide members with content distribution channels, build a convenient and legal authorization mechanism, and promote the normal circulation of content assets.
Strengthen the awareness of copyright protection
Be sure to authorize before use
For copyright owners, how to better protect copyright?
Sun Zhifeng suggested that firstly, copyright owners should strengthen their awareness of copyright protection, especially the awareness of copyright evidence retention, and if conditions permit, establish a relatively complete copyright protection related system; secondly, carry out necessary copyright registration and filing of works; thirdly, be active Carry out rights protection activities; finally, it is necessary to make full use of scientific and technological means to monitor infringement. There are already many infringement monitoring software or platforms on the market, which frees right holders to a certain extent in terms of human investment.
Wang Zhengzhi also suggested that in the Internet environment, copyright owners should protect copyrights from the two perspectives of right confirmation and infringement prevention. From the perspective of right confirmation, when an article is published, the copyright owner should indicate the author's name and the words "no reprint without authorization"; for articles that are not intended to be published for the time being, they can promptly deposit and confirm the right through a third-party electronic forensic deposit platform ; For unpublished articles with high literature value, you can go to the copyright department for copyright registration and keep the original manuscript.
From the perspective of infringement prevention, Wang Zhengzhi suggested that right holders can adopt the following measures from the shallower to the deeper: use the ROBOT protocol to inform data crawling that is not allowed; adopt anti-crawler technical measures to prohibit automated and batch crawling actions; adopt firewall configuration , To blacklist the infringer’s IP or suspicious IP and prohibit its access. In addition, attention should also be paid to daily infringement inspections. The right holder should access the evidence as soon as he discovers the infringement, and notify the infringer to delete it after the evidence is successfully obtained.
Nowadays, it is not uncommon for articles to be infringed. How can we better protect the original and prevent others from infringing?
In this regard, Sun Zhifeng said that, on the one hand, we should give full play to the regulatory and technical advantages of the platform. It is more effective to mobilize the enthusiasm of the service providers of the information network dissemination platform than to crack down on the infringing content providers one by one. For example, after the original article on the WeChat official account is published, other public accounts that need to be reproduced cannot be achieved by copying and pasting in the original. The original public account is required to authorize, which greatly prevents infringements caused by direct reprinting.
"On the other hand, learn to fight combined punches. For malicious infringements, serious infringements or bad influences, through civil litigation, administrative complaints, or even criminal reports, or according to the newly promulgated "Regulations on the Transfer of Suspected Criminal Cases by Administrative Law Enforcement Organs" to the public security organs The case is filed for investigation. For minor infringements, complaints or warning letters are sent to stop them. Do not grab the beard and eyebrows in intellectual property rights protection. Unfocused rights protection may cause serious waste of manpower and material resources, and the effect of rights protection cannot be realized." Sun Zhifeng Say.
In Zou Ren's view, authorizing before using is the basic principle of copyright. In the face of a large number of unauthorized reprints, right holders should not be afraid of trouble and dare to say "no" to infringers. In particular, traditional media should not have concerns about protecting copyrights. They are always worried that protecting copyrights will reduce their influence. In fact, protecting copyright does not mean preventing transmission, but hoping that original works can get their due value. In the face of massive content, the Copyright Alliance is willing to become a bridge between creators and users, and jointly regulate the order of online reprinting of news works.
Wang Zhengzhi suggested: to promote the awareness of rights protection of social groups through the promotion of intellectual property law and rights protection activities; increase the judicial protection of copyright, including considering the volatility of network evidence, and appropriately transferring the burden of proof to the infringer, which can be completed by the copyright owner. After the burden of proof is presented, the relevant rights are reasonably inferred to reduce the difficulty of copyright owners' rights protection; the role of copyright collective management organizations shall be fully utilized to strengthen the unified rights protection and management of works.