"Recently, according to the preliminary verification, the State Administration of market supervision filed an investigation into the suspected monopoly of HowNet according to law." At about 16:00 on May 13, the short message published on the website of the State Administration of market supervision aroused widespread concern. Subsequently, HowNet responded that it would take this investigation as an opportunity to conduct profound self-examination, comprehensive self-examination, complete rectification, operate in accordance with the law, innovate the development model, and assume the social responsibility of China's knowledge infrastructure**
On the afternoon of May 17, at the expert seminar guided by China Internet association and China written Copyright Association, more than 10 experts and scholars discussed the theme of "analysis and comprehensive governance of HowNet case".
Fang Xingdong, a distinguished professor of Qiushi at Zhejiang University, believes that the "HowNet event" is a vivid case of China's dilemma of knowledge production and sharing in the digital age. HowNet events are complex. Solving HowNet problems requires new thinking, institutional innovation and governance mechanism. This antitrust case provides a historic opportunity to solve the protracted HowNet problem.
Zhang Hongbo, director general of the Chinese character Copyright Association, said at the seminar that the "HowNet model" involves copyright infringement, industrial monopoly and the legal and orderly dissemination of knowledge resources, which requires joint governance by multiple departments. The association is investigating and collecting evidence against the complaints of members and other obligees, carrying out multi-point prosecutions, making complaints to relevant departments, and investigating the civil, administrative and even criminal responsibilities of HowNet according to law.
Zhang Hongbo believes that trade associations should face up to the problem of HowNet. In the past six months, after Professor Zhao Dexin sued HowNet, many intellectuals and writers have come forward to sue HowNet. HowNet is a member and director unit of many industry associations, and even an executive director and vice president unit. Should these industry associations also face up to the long-standing infringement and suspected monopoly problems of HowNet? In the face of the widely criticized problems of HowNet, should industry associations conduct industry governance in time?
Li Shunde, a researcher at the Institute of law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, proposed that the discussion of HowNet should not only stay on its suspected monopoly, but also systematically sort out the problems existing in HowNet from the perspective of intellectual property law, especially copyright protection. Why is it that under the service mode of HowNet, everyone's intellectual property rights are seriously infringed, but they can't be solved in time and effectively? Why? The problem brought by HowNet's service model has been "Rome wasn't built in a day". If it is "a headache cures the head and a foot cures the foot", the problem can't be fundamentally solved. We should carefully sort out the social, historical and legal roots, find out the most essential problem of HowNet and innovate thoroughly.
Professor Cong Lixian, Dean of Intellectual Property School of East China University of political science and law, thinks about HowNet from the perspective of legal risk. He proposed that HowNet mainly has three legal risks: there are a large number of unauthorized or coerced authorized works in the platform, non-standard and even illegal problems such as the high price sale of huge database resources in the market, and many "black and gray" phenomena have occurred in the derivative services represented by similarity detection.
Cong Lixian hopes that HowNet, as a knowledge platform, can really play its value and role, return to the original intention of its establishment, and can not completely pursue commercial interests under the banner of "knowledge infrastructure project". This rectification should be based on public interests and service-oriented adjustment of "knowledge infrastructure project".
In the part of countermeasures and suggestions, as HowNet is currently a subsidiary of the same party of A-share listed companies, some scholars believe that HowNet should be stripped away from the business of Listed Companies in an orderly manner according to law, and some scholars believe that HowNet's competitors need to be strongly supported to develop.
Professor Sun Jin, director of the competition law and Policy Research Center of Wuhan University, said that HowNet has been filed for investigation. HowNet has stated that it "fully supports and actively cooperates". If it can really do what it says, the anti-monopoly law enforcement authority may terminate the investigation, which is also a happy ending for everyone. At the same time, we should vigorously support the development of HowNet's competitors, establish the market competition mechanism, and let the market competition promote the benign development of HowNet from inside to outside.
Hu Gang, a member of the lawyer group of the China Consumer Association, suggested that the Internet information, public security, market supervision, state-owned assets, securities, science and technology, education and other departments should work together to conduct coordinated governance, comprehensively investigate the legal risks of HowNet and make special rectification; According to the law, the HowNet will be orderly stripped from the business of listed companies to prevent the vicious erosion of excessive capital profit seeking ideas on knowledge integrators.
Fang Xingdong, a distinguished professor of Qiushi at Zhejiang University, believes that the HowNet is becoming more and more important, and academic work is inseparable from the HowNet. HowNet cannot continue the capital driven development mechanism and should be separated from listed companies. It is hoped that HowNet will make a difference in knowledge sharing and become an interconnected platform for the global academic community.
Yu Guoming, a Changjiang Scholar of the Ministry of education and executive dean of the school of Journalism and communication of Beijing Normal University, said that as a knowledge platform, HowNet is a quasi public facility and should not adopt commercial operation completely. He believes that there are three paths for the future development of knowledge platform: there is a standard contract format acceptable to all parties, and the corresponding balance of rights and interests of multiple parties; When the government auctions the public platform license, the winner of the management right should fulfill some social responsibilities; The use of data resources and text resources is the operation mode of multi-party governance, and should not be regarded as the private property of an enterprise or a platform.
Feng Xiaoqing, doctoral supervisor of China University of political science and law and vice president of China Intellectual Property Law Research Association, considered this issue from the perspective of the contract format between the author and the magazine. He believes that in recent years, with the development and popularization of information network technology, newspapers and periodicals, especially magazines, have promoted online submission, and the rights and obligations between authors and magazines based on published works are determined in advance by the format agreement (contract) of the magazine, which is the key to the problem.
Feng Xiaoqing pointed out that at present, the author's contribution to the magazine has formed a tacit understanding - if you contribute to the magazine, you must accept the magazine's contribution agreement. It was understandable. But now many magazines have increasingly formed a unified "standard": once an article is published in this magazine, all the copyright rights enjoyed by the author are required to be forcibly transferred to the magazine, and the royalties paid by the magazine also include the one-time royalties transmitted through information network platforms such as HowNet. This kind of standard contract actually deprives the author of the copyright property right, and even the inheritance right is bought out in a package. However, the author had to agree to the agreement for the sake of publication.
Feng Xiaoqing suggested that the key to solving this problem is to transform the format contracts signed between journals and authors, and the national copyright administration can regulate such contracts. For example, the formatted publishing contract provided by the national copyright administration is more reasonable and can be used for reference.