Retrospect And Prospect:Criminal Protection Of Computer Software

During the era of the post modern transformation, the legal regulations of computer encounters a practical dilemma and challenges from academics for perceptions of protection differences concerning computer software.Nevertheless, the mainstream opinions traditionally overstress the private right and objective nature of computer software protection, while neglecting the deeper historic research on its criminal regulations, thus it is difficult to respond to those practical challenges to the helplessness of modesty of criminal law and the choice of universality of order. However, it seems rather easier to clarify the significance of its ontology from the micro perspective of research on the history of computer software protection, originated from the innovations of its criminal regulations and clarifying the legal fiction on reform ideas of the crime of copyright infringement. It is recommended that reexamine the conviction standard of crime of copyright infringement, evaluate the legal words of “for the purpose of making profits” and“copy and distribution” normatively and break through the legislative frame of” for the purpose of making profits” in criminal law and emphasize the semantic interpretation of criminal articles on “copy and distribution”.The paper is aimed to discuss the problems of computer software protection in criminal law from five perspectives.The First part introduces the causes of the selection of the subject, background and meaning of the research. The second part is a research retrospect of computer software protection modes and to discuss and review briefly, based on the academic exploration of criminal scholars. The third part is the practical challenges of the helplessness of modesty of criminal law and the choice of universality of order, which is trying to explain it from the following perspectives that seeking to a balance point between private interest and public interest and resolving the obvious controversy between legislative location and internalization. The fourth part is to reconsider the word “for the purpose of making profits”from the crime of copyright infringement,discussing it in two perspectives such as the theoretical problems of legislative designing about “for the purpose of making profits”andevaluating it in a given scope reasonably, in order to exclude it,and how to understand the word “copy and distribution” based on the perspective of social alienation under the background of network. The fifth part is to make an analysis of legislative reconstruction of the crime of copyright infringement from the perspective of the amendment to the Criminal law, finally concluding that break through the legislative frame of“for the purpose of making profits”in criminal law and emphasize the semantic interpretation of criminal articles on “copy and distribution”for the perfection of conviction standards of crime of copyright infringement.