Judicial Interpretation of Information Network Communication Right Implemented

Recently, the Supreme People's Court has promulgated the “Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Cases of Civil Dispute over Information on Internet Dissemination of Disputes”, which will be implemented on January 1 of next year. The promulgation and implementation of this regulation will directly affect the trial of disputes between network service providers and copyright owners. It will also affect billions of netizens who use the Internet to download music and watch video programs and read books.

According to the person in charge of the Supreme Law, since 2002, copyright cases that have been accepted by people's courts have been ranked first in all intellectual property cases. In 2011, for example, the local courts in the country received a total of 59,822 intellectual property first-priority cases, of which 35,185 were copyright cases. The number of copyright disputes involving the right to disseminate information on the Internet accounted for about 60% of all copyright cases in recent years. In the trial of these cases, how to define the right of infringement of information on the Internet, in particular how to determine the legal responsibilities of network service providers, has become a challenge for people's courts to try.

According to the newly issued judicial interpretation, online users and network service providers, without the permission of the right holder, provide information, performances, audio and video products that the rights holder has the right to disseminate information on the Internet through the information network, unless otherwise provided by laws and administrative regulations. It will constitute a violation of information network communication rights.

In this judicial interpretation, the behavior of netizens is also stipulated. According to the judicial interpretation, “when network service providers provide network services, if they instigate or help network users to infringe on information network communication rights, network service providers must bear joint and several liability for online users infringing rights holders’ information network communication rights. "The network service provider shall induce and encourage network users to infringe on the right of spreading information on the Internet through verbal communication, technical support, reward points, etc. The people's court shall determine that it constitutes a tort of infringement."

At the same time, the judicial interpretation decided that “when a network service provider can prove that it has taken reasonable and effective technical measures and it is still difficult to discover that a network user has violated the right to disseminate information on the Internet, the people’s court should determine that it is not at fault.” In addition, the The interpretation also stipulated the issue of jurisdiction over cases of civil disputes that infringe on the right to disseminate information on the Internet.