Good news! XIE Lin, a PhD Candidate joined blawgdog as a co-writer. Please read her recent paper:

Presentation in International conference: DIME – Creative Industries Observatory (CIO) – Birkbeck

SOLUTIONS TO P2P COPYRIGHT CRISIS

XIE Lin

Dowload Full-text at Here (PDF).

Abstract:

Recently, most countries face the problem of revising copyright law because of the introduction of Peer to Peer (P2P) technology on the internet which has badly aggravated the piracy of unauthorized file-sharing. This paper will first examine the traditional creative incentive theory of intellectual property under a new digital circumstance and find out the best position the law should take between P2P users, ISPs and copyright owners. It will discuss technology protection, fast piracy speed, new market models and free culture. Second, it will highlight and explain the legal uncertainties of primary and secondary liabilities. With regard to P2P users, it will review the dispute issues in Hong Kong Bit Torrent case, Tai Wan P2P case, discuss the tendency of other countries to revise unauthorized uploading and downloading liability. For Internet Service Providers (ISPs), it will explore four kinds of liabilities, contributory, vicarious, authorized and joint liabilities in representative jurisdictions, through studying series relevant cases, e.g. Grokster Case, KaZaa case. Third, it will compare scopes of these two liabilities with alternative solutions, in order to achieve an optimized model of solutions. Levy system, compulsory licensing and other possible solutions will be evaluated altogether. Considering the different legal traditions and national situations, the proposed solutions in different countries might be similar but not exactly the same.

Keywords:
unauthorized uploading and downloading; criminal liability of P2P; users; liability of ISPs; licensing