The Limitation of Copyright Protection on the Internet:A Comparative Study of U.S. DMCA & Taiwan''''''''s Fair Use Provision

• Main Authors: Hsin-Lan Hu, 胡心蘭
• Other Authors: Jerry G. Fong
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/90080563474150262559

碩士 === 中原大學 === 財經法律研究所 === 89 === The fundamental idea of copyright law is not only to motivate the creativity of authors, but also to pursue the intended culture goals─to circulate and encourage the knowledge exchanges and the inheritances from the cultural developments. Hence, in order to balance the conflicts of interests between the copyright owners and the pubic, almost every country has put proportional limitations on copyrights. In 1967, the Fair Use doctrine was formally embodied in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, which can be used as a basic rule to determine the legitimacy of fair use. In addition to that, the U.S. courts and legislatures also further exercise their power to interpret and extend the fair use doctrine, in accordance with the social and technological developments. There are also several statutory limitations imposed on copyright owners in Taiwan’s copyright law. Art. 44 to 65 of the Copyright Act clearly state the “ Limitations on Property Rights of Copyright”. Nevertheless, the Art. 65 in this law are literarily referred to the similar provisions in Sec. 107 of the U.S. copyright law, which enumerate four standards to review the legitimacy of fair use. Therefore, in clarifying and resolving the doubts, which are occurred from the fair use applications under the Taiwanese Copyright law, this thesis will focus on the developments and applications of fair use doctrine in US. Copyright law, and also concentrate on the analyses of fair use related cases in U.S.. Furthermore, in implementing the WCT and WPPT agreements, the US. Legislatures promulgated “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998; DMCA”. In Sec. 1201 of this act, the “Anti-circumvention” provision, specifically prohibit anyone from circumventing the technological measures, which are imposed by copyright owners in order to protect their digital copyrighted works. However, this legislation in fact creates a whole new legal right for copyright owners─“The Access Right”. As a result, this legislation also provokes the public fears of “Pay-Per-Use” world in the near future, and raises the concerns of the possible evaporation of fair use doctrine in U.S law. Accordingly, this controversial issue will definitely become a major issue in Taiwan, particularly, when the legislators are reviewing the copyright law legislations in order to cope with the world trend in terms of copyright law legislation. Therefore, this thesis also aims to elaborately research on this controversial issue, and attempts to address the possible resolutions and directions for legislators in Taiwan.