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ABSTRACT
Since its introduction into China, the Internet is said to bring in a robust force of commons in cyberspace. Under the ideology of ‘sharing’ and ‘free flow of information’, the Internet is making good use of users' free labor and their personal data. The unique business model has become the foundation of digital commons in China. Furthermore, we could figure out the rise of the Internet in China has been following the similar ‘illegal’ model all the time, thus causing copyright infringement and other disputes accordingly. This paper traces the early ages of cyberspace in China, trying to figure out how the private-public mixed nature of the digital commons came into being and discusses relavant legal issues during the process, shedding a light on the unique relationship between mode of production tranformation and legal regime.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See e.g. Zixue Tai, The Internet in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society (Routledge 2006); Zhou Yongming, Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China (Stanford University Press 2006); Yongnian Zheng, Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford University Press 2008); Guobin Yang, ‘The Internet and Civil Society in China: A Preliminary Assessment’ (2003) 12 Journal of Contemporary China 453.
2 Axel Bruns, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (Peter Lang 2008).
3 Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It (Yale University Press 2008).
4 Zhao Yuezhi, Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict (Rowman & Littlefield 2008); Zhong Xueping, Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China (University of Hawaii Press 2010). For comparison with Maoist era practice, see Richard Kraus, The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2004).
5 Daniel C Lynch, After the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and “Thought Work” in Reformed China (Stanford University Press 1999); Lee Chin-Chuan (ed), Power, Money, and Media: Communication Patterns and Bureaucratic Control in Cultural China (Northwestern University Press 2000).
6 Martin K Dimitrov, Piracy and the State: The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights in China (Cambridge University Press 2009); Andrew Mertha, The Politics of Piracy: Intellectual Property in Contemporary China (Cornell University Press 2005).
7 Lena Henningsen, Copyright Matters: Imitation, Creativity and Authenticity in Contemporary Chinese Literature, (BWV, Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag 2010); Pang Laikwan, Cultural Control and Globalization in Asia: Copyright, Piracy, and Cinema (Routledge 2006).
8 For example, Meng Bingchun and Wu Fei, ‘Commons/Commodity: Peer Production Caught in the Web of the Commercial Market’ (2013) 16 Information, Communication & Society 125.
9 So it is with the case of book, see Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (Penguin Press 2004).
10 Jonathan Zittrain thought this mainly originated from security concerns. See Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it (n 11).
11 Shengda Literature City perfectly exemplifies such model.
12 Even the disc drive of the computer is diminishing due to the quest for thinness, lightness and mobility of end-devices.
13 Nicolas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (W. W. Norton & Co. 2008).
14 Even the companies like Microsoft starts to consider terminate the practice of selling disc and rent the software. For example, the latest product Windows 8 can only be upgraded from Windows 7 through the Internet in China.
15 Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion 2009); David S Evens, Platform Economics: Essays on Multi-Sided Businesses (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2011).
16 More than half of Tencent's annual income comes from online game.
17 Think about the portable PC and the files stored and software installed on it, which is usually deemed as property and privacy.
18 Andrew Shapiro, The Control Revolution: How the Internet Is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know (PublicAffairs 1999).
19 To add an online song into one's personal account might be different from downloading a song onto his PC. For the former, the user doesn't own the song at all. See Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access: How the Shift from Ownership to Access is Transforming Capitalism (Penguin Books 2000).
20 It is the same with Facebook, which is reluctant to open its content to Google and will keep it to make money by itself.
21 After several cases against it, P2P software has become smarter and more decentralized. It's more difficult for copyright holders to collect proof on a P2P network without the help of ISP. But sites providing obvious pirated works downloading service like MegaUpload and Pirate Bay were finally shut down.
22 Such issue appears in the ‘net neutrality’ debate.
23 For example, SOPA and PIPA.
24 Lawrence Lessig, Code: Version 2.0 (Basic Books 2006).
25 For example, writers and publishing houses still heavily rely on bookstore to sell books, although many small physical bookstores are not able to compete with online shops and finally closed. Musicians and record companies are not accustomed to providing their music for free as well.
26 Regulations on the Protection of the Right of Communication through Information Network (2006).
27 Techniques were employed to prevent them from finding the infringing behavior such as IP address blocking. Numerous Funsub Groups also helped in the dissemination of programs with a foreign language.
28 Sony Corp. of America v Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984).
29 For detailed discussions, see Hu Ling, ‘Who Owns Online Information? A Study of Baidu Wenku’ (2013) 1 PKU Law Review 25.
30 Google Book Service shares a similar logic of defense.
31 Record companies began to cooperate with Baidu to sell and distribute music, which means a great recession and compromise.
32 This is the nature of Tencent vs. 360 battle in 2010, but few observers realized its significance. See Hu Ling, ‘Cybersecurity, Privacy and the Future of the Internet’ (2012) 2 Peking University Law Journal 35.
33 Barbara van Schewick, Internet Architecture and Innovation (MIT Press 2010).
34 Digital rights are also commonly used to fight against traditional capitalist conglomerates. See Hector Postigo, The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright (MIT Press 2012).
35 Viktor Mayer Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2013). In this sense, the new economy also requires an exception of privacy of the people. After the conquest over most people, the Internet companies started to enact privacy rules for their own interest.
36 For example, Terms of Service of Baidu, Art. 17; of Sina, Art. 4.5; of Tencent, Art. 2.6.1.
37 Trebor Scholz (ed), Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory (Routledge 2012).
38 This paper will not focus on the internal relationship among service providers such as unfair competition.
39 Techniques were employed to prevent them from finding the infringing behavior such as IP address blocking. Numerous Funsub Groups also helped in the dissemination of programs with a foreign language.
40 Sony Corp. of America v Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984).
41 For detailed discussions, see Hu Ling, ‘Who Owns Online Information? A study of Baidu Wenku’ (n 29).
42 Google Book Service shares a similar logic of defense.
43 Recording companies began to cooperate with Baidu to sell and distribute music, which means a great recession and compromise.
44 This is the nature of Tencent vs. 360 battle in 2010, but few observers realized its significance. See Ling, ‘Cybersecurity, Privacy and the Future of the Internet’ (n 32).
45 Phil Simon, The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business (Motion Publishing 2011).
46 Christopher S Yoo, The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses Are Changing the Network (AEI Press 2012).
47 Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (n 11).
48 Jun Lin, Ebullition of Fifteen Years (Zhongxin Press 2009).
49 Lessig, Code: Version 2.0 (n 24).
50 The invention of Google Glass is an extreme example in this case, in which even our hands are liberated.
51 Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (Penguin Press 2010).
52 Yang Guobin, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (Columbia University Press 2009).