Copyright Plight Out Of The Digital Age

The copyright law system has the close relationship with the development and progress of the technology. During the five-hundred-year history of the development, the copyright law system has been continuously amended and adjusted for the progress of the new technologies and the cooperation between them is basically workable. Since the emergence of the information society, the copyright law system has been suffering the challenges and crisis never experienced before.This article is divided into five chapters, outlining the relationship between copyright history and technology development, discussing why copyright system has been impacted by digital technology sharply. combined with characteristics of the Chinese reality, to make recommendations for the Chinese copyright protection.The first chapter reviews the history of copyright. Starting with the birth of modern printing technology, Britain issued the first written copyright law of the world, pointing that the original intention of copyright protection is the control of public opinion by feudal monarchs,not derived from some kind of civil rights. The rise of the second technological revolution lead simulation technology to impact basic theory of copyright, and other types of works. Photography, phonograph, automatic piano, tape recorder, home video and electrostatic copiers had promoted new thinkings on copyright. Copyright protection has also been greatly expanded during the period. The first electronic computer was born in 1945, computer technology had developed rapidly in the absence of the copyright's intervention for three decades. With its integration with the communication technology, digital technology has showed its power. In the Internet environment, the private copying had got unprecedented convenience, transmissions of works had been expanded. There are revolutionary changes in the aspects of media integration and public participation of creation works. The current copyright law system has not yet been ready for this mass participation of works creation.The second chapter explains the reason of copyright system's existence. The basic idea of copyright protection including natural rights and utilitarianism. The latter of which is the current mainstream. Utilitarian emphasis on encouraging the creation of new works and disseminating to the community to promote public interest in order to achieve maximum net social welfare. Because intellectual property has public goods quality, copyright protection is needed to solve the "extemal" problems, in order to enhance incentives for creators through economic returns, avoid output insufficient and exacerbating the plight of the scarcity of resources which are the root causes of knowledge goods formed as commodity. This is reflected in two aspects:The scarcity of intellectual and dissemination resources. These constitute the two pillars of the copyright protection system.The third chapter analyzes how the footings have been shaken. First, the fundamental factors of encouraging knowledge products creation are not economic returns but creative instincts. Second, the scarcity of resources has undergone huge changes. The improvement of scarcity of intellectual and dissemination resources has greatly reduced the monopoly profits. Third, the spiritual needs of the knowledge products are different from the material needs of the physical commodity. The formers lack of uniform criteria for judging the quality so that the quality of knowledge is not entirely dependent on the amount of intellectual resources. Fourth, digital products have got rid of the dependence of material object. The identity of producers and consumers are increasingly blurred. The chain of production, exchange and consumption is dissolving. Finally, the democratization of knowledge production has lowered the threshold of popular participation in knowledge creation.The fourth chapter proposed an alternative emerging economic model. While intellectual and dissemination resources are getting rich, the resources of public attention become scarce. The rise of the Attention Economy has came to reality. Attention raise to reputation to become the core of new economic model and it's the right solution to the "free rider" problem. Therefor the need for copyright protection has further collapsed. In addition, crowdsourcing, Creative Commons give up economic rights while emphasis on the protection of moral rights.Chapter V analyzes Chinese unique free consuming habits, discusses reasons of poor awareness of domestic copyright protection. Copyright protection should focus on spiritual rights andweaken the protection of economic rights.