合作以保护权利:避风港规则的司法实践与改进方向

Co-operation to Protect Rights:Judicial Practice and Improvement Direction of the Safe Harbour Rule

创设避风港规则的目的是平衡网络版权侵权责任的分担,促进权利人与网络服务者合作以保护权利。避风港规则设立至今已有20年,版权依然饱受海量侵权行为的困扰,亟需对避风港规则进行改革。搜集2014年至2020年的1613件民事一审避风港案件裁判文书,通过实证研究发现原告疏于通知、被告对侵权事实不知情、侵权行为影响较小以及未从侵权行为中盈利都会减少原告获得的赔偿。这说明避风港规则虽然要求版权权利人与网络服务商合作打击侵权行为,但权利人维权时并不优先采取该最优预防措施,而是将侵权人和网络服务商一起作为被告。因此,为发挥避风港规则的合作作用,可以考虑提高网络服务商的责任,强化运用侵权内容过滤技术,使网络服务商成为合作保护权利的主导者。

The purpose of creating the safe harbour rule is to balance the sharing of liability for online copy-right infringement and to promote cooperation between right holders and online service providers to protect their rights.It has been 20 years since the establishment of the safe harbour rules,and copyright is still plagued by massive infringement,and there is an urgent need to reform the safe harbour rules.With the collec-tion of 1,613 civil first-instance safe harbour case decisions from 2014 to 2020,the empirical study finds that negligent notification by the plaintiff,the defendant’s ignorance of the fact of infringement,the small impact of the infringement,and the failure to profit from the infringement all reduce the damages awarded to the plain-tiff.This shows that although the safe harbour rule requires copyright right holders to cooperate with internet service providers in combating infringement,right holders do not prioritise this optimal preventive measure when defending their rights,but rather take the infringer and internet service providers together as the defen-dant.Therefore,in order to give full play to the cooperative role of safe harbor provisions,it is possible to con-sider increasing the responsibility of internet service providers,strengthening the use of infringing content fil-tering technology,and making internet service providers the dominant players in cooperative protection of rights.