ISPs’ Duty of Care in Copyright Infringement

This dissertation discussed the ISP’s duty of care in copyright infringement. The duty hereon refers to the ISP’s legal obligation to take care of the influence of the provided service on the protection of others’ copyright. The duty is divided into three sub-categories: the duty of general prevention, the duty of assistance in specific infringement and the duty to deal with repeated infringement. In order to provide a comprehensive and systematic explanation of the duty, four main aspects are logically discussed: the background, the status quo, the justification, and the specific application. In addition to the traditional mechanism of notice and take down, it is asserted that the ISP should play a more active role in dealing with the users’ online infringement. In particular, the ISP should be imposed on a legal obligation to keep neutral actually and to have general control of the infringing activities through their service. Thereby, the application of the filtering technologies should not be refused as a whole, but should be limited from the perspective of the purpose, the scope as well as the efficacy. Accordingly, the fundamental orientation of the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Copyright in the Digital Single Market is supported by this dissertation. At the same time, it is recommended to adopt the application of the duty of general prevention on the ISPs providing platforms instead of recognizing the service itself as communicating to the public.