The Dysfunction and Remedies of Copyright Registration System in the Digital Era

Abstract

In the digital age, the ever-growing development of communication technologies and their efficiency pose new challenges to the copyright registration system. Whether it is the registration demand for opuscules in the era of explosive works or the need to add the validity of registration under zero-cost dissemination, it signals a new turning point for the copyright registration system and calls for new changes. The inherent logic behind a voluntary copyright registration system lies in legal incentives and the fundamental reason for the malfunction of China’s copyright registration system in the digital age is the imperfection of intrinsic incentive mechanisms. In order to address this problem, based on the Cost-Benefit theory, the paper proposes the construction of a legal incentive mechanism for copyright registration from two aspects: reducing registration costs and increasing registration validity through intensive management, differentiated examination and an auxiliary registration system. It is expected to lower the threshold of copyright registration and meanwhile to provide practical operational standards to increase registration validity.