I admit that my attitude towards learning during university has not been very diligent. However, when it comes to my graduation thesis, I really want to do it well, as it marks the end of my student life.

From the beginning of choosing the topic until now, I have been wavering and wondering whether I should make a significant innovation, either in the topic selection or simply in the content.

Initially, I really wanted to write about the issue of “blog copyright.” Although online copyright is a long-standing issue, the copyright of blogs, especially independent blogs, is a relatively new topic. It not only involves domestic copyright laws but also international copyright, Creative Commons (CC), or other popular open-source copyright schemes on the internet.

Let me give a simple example: Japanese person A’s independent blog server is located in the United States. While in Japan, he wrote many articles about pornography and posted numerous pornographic images and videos. After acquiring Chinese citizenship, he continued to operate this blog but did not add any further explicit content. Can Chinese law determine that A’s subsequent actions constitute the dissemination of obscene information?

Another example: Wang, like me, is struggling to run an independent blog, but his blog contains articles he has published in various newspapers and magazines. One day, Wang, as usual, wrote an article and submitted it to a magazine, then posted it on his blog the next day. Zhang accidentally saw this article on Wang’s blog and submitted it to Zhao’s independent blog. Since Zhao’s blog has a very high ranking, the article was quickly reposted. Later, the magazine refused to publish Wang’s article because it lacked novelty, causing Wang significant losses. Shouldn’t Wang’s expected loss due to copyright infringement be compensated? If so, who should be held responsible?

Continuing with another example: Suppose Wang altered an article by American B, which was translated without permission from Zhang’s BSP blog, and submitted it to Zhao’s independent blog. Zhao gained substantial advertising revenue from the traffic generated by this article.

The issue of joint infringement between Zhao and Wang in this scenario is a blind spot in previous research because Wang did not gain any benefit from the infringement, and B’s article is not protected by Chinese copyright law. Zhao’s independent blog does not have independent legal status, and it is even possible that the article was reviewed by a third party on Zhao’s behalf. If this article involves the dissemination of vulgar or cult-related information, who should be punished? If B is Chinese but wrote the article in the United States, where it fully complies with local laws… In fact, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg in the development of independent blogs. Not only is mutual infringement or joint infringement between independent blogs common, but with the proliferation of spam sites on the internet, the intellectual property environment for independent blogs is not optimistic, especially under the guise of “special permits for blog operations.” Any so-called “independent blog” in China is considered “illegal operation.”

In essence, “independent blogs” in China are mostly run by people who do not want to be constrained, and a significant characteristic of these people is that “if they take a slightly bigger step, they are likely to get into trouble.”

Being despised by government departments is a given, and the lack of protection for rights is expected. Even domestic search engines have started to ignore this group, and SEO has become increasingly irrelevant.

I have carefully considered this for about a month or two, reading a lot of papers on blog copyright, but I still haven’t grasped the essence.

Of course, I have found some good papers, such as: “Research on the Fair Use System of Personal Blog Website Copyright” (CNKI paper, about BSP blogs).

Unfortunately, there are no papers on the traditional “personal blog,” but there are many essays, mostly about “personal websites being suspected of illegality.”

To write or not to write, that is the question.