Looking into the mirror (copyright law/reproduce/lawyer/personal homepage)

Looking into the mirror (copyright law/reproduce/lawyer/personal homepage)

Li Dongtao

Description: mirroring=copying

The case

Learn to look

between the lines the words¹

This is a case about “Look”.

The plaintiff is a lawyer.

The defendant is a .com company.

In May 1998, the plaintiff established his personal homepage online for publishing information and articles on barrister exams.

In June 1999, the plaintiff concluded a contract with the defendant in which the plaintiff agreed to allow the defendant to mirror his personal homepage at its website without any modifications or direct commercial purposes.

Afterwards, the defendant modified some contents of the plaintiff’s personal homepage in the process of mirroring, and the defendant also added a new mirror in another of its websites.LDT

The plaintiff sued the defendant for copyright infringement.

The defendant argued that the copyright infringement was not established because what it did was for purpose of enhancing the plaintiff’s popularity.

Analysis

The copyright infringement is established.

Mirroring means the creation of a remote copy of data or complete hypermedia documents at another address.

It can help to decrease network traffic over the Internet backbone.

Under copyright law theory, mirroring means copying without modification.

In this case, without the plaintiff’s permission, the defendant enlarged the scope of use of the plaintiff’s personal homepage permitted under the agreement, the copyright infringement is obvious.

In short, learn to look, between infringement and mirror.