加拿大留学论文：在线知识产权保护：我们能从SOPA学到什么?_加拿大论文

加拿大留学生论文：在线知识产权保护：我们能从SOPA学到什么?

Introduction 介绍

自上世纪90年代，互联网飞速发展的网络应用程序Napster 1999，介绍了广泛使用的通过互联网，把人们带进数字生活新篇章遇到的更多问题。其中一个主要问题是网络盗版。为了保护版权的原创者，有一些行为是由政府批准的，如数字千年版权法案（DMCA）1998。然而，巨大的经济损失如娱乐业中，如许多唱片公司，图书出版，电影制作的盗版从未停止。2011年，禁止网络盗版法案（SOPA）提出了保护网络著作权，停止网上盗版。在本文中，我们将提供简要介绍了网络IP威胁和几个保护网络版权的行为，包括在第一部分中的SOPA。然后，我们将分析SOPA和理性的缺陷，为什么SOPA未能获得批准;最后我们推荐了若干建议，以保护版权，打击网络盗版。

Since the rapid speed of internet growth during the 1990s, peer-to-peer application, Napster 1999, was introduced and widely used through internet that brought people into a new chapter of digital life with more problems. One of the major problems is online piracy. In order to protect copyright from the original creators, there are several acts that were approved by the government of the U.S, such as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998. However, the giant economic lost of entertainment industry, such as many recording music companies, book publishing, and movie producers, was never stopped. In 2011, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was proposed to protect the online copyright and stop the online piracy. In this paper, we would provide brief introduction of online IP threatens and several protecting online copyright acts including the SOPA in the first part; and then, we will analyze the flaws of SOPA and the reason when SOPA failed to be approved; last but not least, we recommend several suggestions to protect the copyright and to strike online piracy.

Relative piracy situations and laws 有关盗版情况和法律

Due to the speedy development and special characteristics of internet, massive information could be found and download from it that improves the efficiency of people’s digital life and raises the copyright issues at the same time. The copyright protection aims to “encourage the creation of artistic and literary work by providing economic incentives to be creative” (Flanigan, Marks, & La Roche n.d, p. 1). However, the illegal online sharing files through peer-to-peer application could cause abundant economic decline of entertainment industry, disc music sales and boxing office for movies.

According to Recording Industry Association of (RIAA), in the past decade the fall of disc sales was around 8 percent each year (Goldman, 2010). The major reason is that people could instantaneously share and download the new released music through the sites for piracy online. Instead of buying new alum from shore, people definitely would prefer to download it online. The piracy online are extremely detrimental to the not only recording music industry but the whole entertainment industry which including movie industry, publishing industry, and software industry. Without legal releasing various products online, copyright protection fail to incent artistes’ creations and the whole entertainment industry would be hit hard.

Many researchers have measured the lost of music and movie industry caused by piracy online. For instance, according to Flanigan, Marks, & La Roche (n.d), “Hui and Png (2003) support the idea that piracy and compact disc sales act as substitutes. The authors claim that piracy has resulted in loss of sales of approximately 6.6%. While this is significant, it is less than half of the estimate made by the music industry. Zetner (2004) offers a slightly higher estimate with a decline in the range of 7.8% to 14.5% for music sales” (p. 5). Both these two researchers indicate the declined number of disc sales that point out the outcomes of piracy. Additionally, according to a survey from RIAA, “of the respondents, 84.8% own a CD burner and 84.8% admitted to downloading music over the Internet” depend on peer-to-peer application (Flanigan and Marks, n.d. p. 5). The sites of piracy online take advantage of peer-to-peer to disseminate pirated music and files.

In addition, the movie industry suffers copyright infringement at the same time. Harrison (2012) indicates that releaser raise the price of a movie ticket from average $7.89 in 2010 to $8.15 in 2012 in order to make up for the loss of boxing office. Pirated films still could be found online while movie industry use several anti-piracy methods to fight with copyright infringement, such as “watermarking the films, renaming and vaulting films prior to theatrical release, high security at ‘high-risk’ theatres, working with YouTube to take down infringed copyright material, and all deliveries of the film are required to have specific signatures”(p. 3). In order to protect copyrights for each relative industry, the U.S government and many states government proposed several acts that could offer copyright owners more legal protections.