The Challenge Of Blockchain Technology To Copyright Collective Management System And Response

Blockchain technology is currently used in the licensing and trading of digital works,making use of the storage,recording and automatic execution functions of blockchain technology to provide new ways for copyright holders to manage their works.Traditionally,the copyright collective management organization is authorized by the author or by laws for copyright management,including licensing,collecting copyright fees,litigation,arbitration,etc.Most of the countries all over the world have the copyright collective management system,the common practices for centralized management of works.However,in practice,copyright collective management organizations have a series of problems,such as unreasonable fees,low management efficiency and high management cost,which greatly affects the interests of copyright owners.The lack of trust in the copyright collective management organization and the unsatisfied expectation of the copyright revenue are the important factors that the copyright owners may quit the copyright collective management system.Blockchain technology has significant characteristics:transparency,decentralization,tamper-resistant information,smart contract,the users and the copyright owners are able to complete the licensing deals on their own.Benefiting from the information transparency and high security,users can timely find the works that they want to get licenses from the copyright owners.Copyright holders can keep track of the proceeds of the licensed work,and both parties don’t need to trust each other.There is also no need of the management of a third party,greatly reducing transaction costs,improving the efficiency of transactions and realizing the private management of copyright.Blockchain technology has become a new choice of copyright management for copyright owners,and it also brings great challenges to the copyright collective management system.At present,the application of blockchain technology in the field of copyright in the world mainly includes:the blockchain technology platform stores the works of the right holder for other users,and the right holder can also license the works to another platform to automatically receive and distribute the copyright income through smart contracts.The copyright collective management organization cooperates with block chain technology companies to build a new platform for copyright management using block chain technology.And copyright industry companies use smart contracts to automatically distribute benefits and provide rewards for the dissemination of works to the corresponding communicators.Blockchain copyright management,however,has its limits.On the one hand,blockchain copyright management has an incomplete effect on the protection of copyright owners’ private rights.For example,works that are not protected by digital technology,as well as works which copyright holders do not manage on a block chain platform,should still rely on the copyright collective management system.The copyright collective management organization continues to perform its traditional functions can also ensure that the income of the copyright holder will not reduce because of its loss of support of the organization.On the other hand,until today,copyright collective management organizations have been more than just organizations for licensing fees and safeguarding rights.In some countries,copyright collective management organizations assume special responsibilities such as cultural dissemination and promotion of copyright protection.In addition,the obstacles to the fair use of works and the lack of copyright verification of works on the blockchain which leads to the problem of easy accumulation of infringing works,make the copyright collective management organizations a special need.In today’s technological development,the role of copyright collective management organizations has changed from "participator" of copyright management to "service provider",aiming to provide convenient and an open copyright license platform for copyright owners and users.Based on the practice of the cooperation mode of copyright collective management organization and blockchain technology platform,more intelligent and complete copyright collective management shall appear,and the functions of collective management organizations under the background of blockchain also need to be improved.