XXVI

1.Artists may choose to sue an information network service provider together with the users of the network platform when facing an infringement by an online platform user, and urge the information network service provider to perform the obligation to disclose the personal information of the infringer and the information of pageviews of the case-related article during the litigation process.

2.In the case of disputes over right of reputation, the specific amount of compensation for mental damage needs to be determined by the artist’s popularity and public image, the fault of the tort feasor, the mode of transmission, the nature of defamation and insult, the scope of the infringement and the circumstances of regret and apology.

Case: On the social network platform operated by the Company W,the online user Y posted a blog post about the negative news of the artist H.Once the blog post was published, it caused a large number of netizens to forward, comment and hit the like button.H believed that its content blatantly slandered that he had huge debts, which resulted in serious damage to this reputation, so he brought Company W and Y to court, arguing that Y should pay compensation for mental damage.Company W argued that it had provided the registration information of Y in accordance with the court’s order and fulfilled the corresponding legal obligations.Y acknowledged that he reposted the article involved in the case, but argued that the content of the article was not from the original but from other websites, and the content link has been deleted, which has relatively little impact.((2016) Jing 0108 Min Chu No.12019)(https://www.daowen.com)

The court held that: In response to the question of whether Company W is liable for infringement.Generally speaking, network service providers may not be liable for infringement if they take necessary measures such as deletion, blocking, and disconnection in a timely manner after receiving notification of infringement of platform content.The original intention of choosing to sue the network service provider was not to make the network platform take responsibility, but to enable the network service provider to fulfill its obligations of disclosing the infringer’s account information.In this case, after Company W fulfilled its obligation to disclose the personal information of the infringing user and the information related to Weibo views in the litigation process, H did not file any other lawsuits against Company W.

Determining the specific amount of compensation for mental damages needs to take into account the artist’s popularity and public image,the tort feasor’s fault, the method of transmission, the nature of defamation and insult, the scope of the infringement, and conditions that whether the tort feasor clarif ies the facts and makes a private apology or not.Although Y claimed that her article was reposted on Weibo only 178 times, as of the time the registered user account was finally deleted, it had been read 138,568 times.Secondly, the article was reprinted by many media outlets, forming a wide amount of unfavorable dissemination on the Internet, which caused H’s original good impression on the public to be damaged; it caused direct damage to image, and it is bound to cause serious mental damage to H.H’s lawsuit for Y to compensate for mental damage reliefis well-supported by the law .