The criminalizing criteria of network copyright infringement in accumulative offences field
Under the impact of the intensifying network copyright infringement and varying methods to narrow the crimi-nalizing criteria,the threshold for criminal liability in network copyright crimes is caught between pressures for expansion and restriction.To prevent blindly expanding these criteria solely to cater to society's simplistic perception of"security",it is appropriate to maintain a reasonable approach to restriction.However,the academic community's conventional ap-plication of the principle of legal order unity as a means of limitation has proven ineffective.This is because the theory can only negatively exclude acts from criminal punishment through prior legal provisions if they do not constitute civil vio-lations,without revealing an upper limit for criminal sanctions.On the contrary the accumulative offence theory aligns well with network copyright infringement,providing theoretical backing to clarify the criminalizing criteria for such crimes.Specifically,the concept of a"threshold"within the accumulative offence theory guides the Criminal Law to tar-get maliciously unlawful conduct,distinguishing it from reasonable market self-regulation,thus upholding the principle of restraint.The notion of"real cumulative effect"helps guide the Criminal Law in assessing whether illegal acts have a re-alistic potential for widespread occurrence.Guided by the accumulative offence theory,the Criminal Law should retain the"profit purpose"provision to substantiate the existence of"real cumulative effect".Given the lack of a pervasive ex-pansion trend in reality,dissemination of information over networks should not encompass non-interactive forms of distri-bution.Since aiding circumvention behavior is indeed prone to widespread imitation,acts of undermining technological measures involve both direct circumvention and aiding circumvention.However,since the extent of such imitation is lower than that of reproduction,distribution,and dissemination of information over networks,a higher criminalizing standard should be set for acts undermining technological measures compared to these latter activities.
国家科技期刊平台
NSTL
万方数据
