Evaluation And Analysis Of The Criminal Cases Of The Plug-Ins Behavior Involving Online Games

As of December 2021,China had 666 million game users,and the game market sales volume has increased by 6.4% year on year from the previous year.The huge number of game users has brought huge profits to China’s game industry,but there are also infringements such as malicious production and sales of online game plug-ins for illegal profits.According to the statistical analysis of 180 practical cases shows that there are disputes over how to evaluate the criminal law attributes of game plug-ins in practice,including illegal publications,programs that specifically intrude into computer systems and software that infringes copyright.There are several controversies about the crime of making and selling online game plug-ins,including innocence,illegal business operation,copyright infringement and computer system intrusion.Through the analysis of 180 similar cases and the analysis of three typical sample cases of "Han Xiao’s illegal business operation case,Tang Jianbin’s case of making and selling plug-ins invading computer systems,and Li Shoubin’s manufacturing and selling plug-ins infringing copyright",from the perspective of the operation principle of online game plug-ins and the operation principle of plug-ins breakthrough technical protection measures,it can be concluded that: First,the source code data of the game must be extracted during the production process of the online game plug-ins,and the compiled program is substantially similar in function to the main structure of the original game,role functions and scene content;Second,combined with the "contact + substantial similarity" rule,it can be determined that the plug-in is not an illegal publication or a program that specifically invades computer systems,in essence,it should belong to the copyright infringement software,and production and sale behavior belongs to reproduction and issue behavior;Third,the "Criminal Law Amendment(11)" increases the four objective methods of copyright infringement to six,and adds a clause to deliberately avoid or destroy the technical protection measures of the right holder,which is essentially a reaffirmation of the applicable position of the crime of copyright infringement,in the future,for the malicious production and sale of online game plug-ins that meet the prosecution standards,the crime of copyright infringement should be applied first,and the crime of selling infringing copies should be applied to the simple sales of plug-ins.Regarding the issue of fines and sentencing disputes after characterization,the essence is that fines and sentencing are unreasonable or mixed with reasoning.On the basis of the "Guiding Opinions on Sentencing of Common Crimes",we can uphold the modesty of criminal law and establish a system of separate fine and sentencing judgment documents into paragraphs of reasoning.At the same time,the fines and sentencing discretion are appropriately reduced,and the disputes on criminal punishment caused by the malicious production and sale of online game plug-ins in practice can be effectively managed.