Paving the Way for the Filtering Obligation in China: Incorporating with Safe Harbour and Fair Use

In the data-driven age, the progress of filtering technologies applied to online copyright content would revolutionarily change the traditional copyright legal system, especially as far as rights management and infringement are concerned. With the rapid development of online content-sharing platforms and massive infringements the followed, increasing attention has been focused on internet service providers’ ex-ante obligations, such as monitoring the use of copyright content online. Although the European Union (EU) Copyright Directive sets an example, the filtering obligation of internet service providers was still controversial in China because of the potential inconsistencies with the safe harbour and fair use regimes. However, the filtering mechanism has its own rationality for balancing the interests of all parties in the context of the platform economy, which meanwhile, can be improved technically along with algorithmic copyright enforcement. In the future, these obstacles in law-making may be removed by the ‘bottom-up’ way that a hierarchical filtering system in China has been established.