Research On Unfair Competition Cases Of Internet Advertising Blocking Software

After the development of the Internet,users get more and more video content from video sites,and the advertising duration of video sites continues to increase,resulting in users’ desire to remove ads more and more,resulting in conflic ts of interest between network users and video sites.Some operators discovered the business opportunities and produced and provided tools for blocking advertisements for network users,allowing users to view video content without ads and paying membership fees.This ever-increasing behavior of operators has disrupted the operation activities of video websites,making the provision of advertising blocking tools one of the important unfair competition behaviors in the Internet field.Before the revision of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law in 2017,there were no relevant provisions specifically addressing unfair competition in the Internet field,and courts can only invoke abstract general clauses in ad blocking cases.In terms of results,domestic courts generally believe that although the law does not prohibit the provision of advertising blocking tools,the behavior violates the legislative spirit of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law,and thus the results of judgments that are very different from foreign courts have caused controversy among researchers.In short,there are differences between practice and theory,domestic and foreign in many aspects of such cases,and it is indeed necessary to conduct in-depth research.The thesis takes the advertising screening cases from 2013 to 2019 as a research sample,focusing on three key issues in such cases: first,whether the original defendant has a competitive relationship;second,whether to protect the "free + advertising" business model;Whether it is legitimate to provide tools for blocking ads.This article analyzes the three focus points one by one.First,the plaintiff and the defendant have a competitive relationship;second,although the plaintiff ’s business model was damaged due to the destruction of the "fr ee + advertising" business model,the business model should not be protected;finally,the defendant ’s behavior violates business ethics and honesty The principle of credit is detrimental to the public interest and is not legitimate.After the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" was revised in 2017,the definition of unfair competition was supplemented and the Internet article was born.The theory began to debate whether it is still necessary to determine whether the competition relationship and the Internet art icle apply to advertising blocking cases.Regrettably,these changes in the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" have no effect on advertising blocking cases.The competition relationship should still be determined that the defects of the Internet special rules m ake it unsuitable for such cases.In addition,it is recommended that the target program that runs the "free + advertising" business model be regarded as the object protected by the copyright law,and use the modification rights in the copyright to determi ne the nature of the advertising blocking tool.