On September 1, the Supreme Law rearranged the network reproduction rules: copying published works on websites must be authorized first.

The release of the law [2026] No. 18 published on August 20 was not long, but directly changed several long-standing operating habits in China's network content industry. for news websites, media, content aggregation platforms and image users, at least four articles are worth checking.

The first is networking.

Traditional copyright systems allow qualified newspapers and journals to reproduce published works under specific circumstances and apply statutory licenses through payment.

Reproduction between newspapers and Internet information service providers, as well as reproduction of published works between Internet information service providers, does not fall within the scope of this legal license.

This change directly addresses a long-standing misconception: the publication of articles does not mean that other websites automatically obtain the full copy rights.

The second is the legal recognition that the work is “opened.”

The judicial interpretation adjusted the expression of "public to the public" to no longer take the copyright owner's own initiative to disclose or authorize disclosure as the sole prerequisite. The work may also enter the relevant legal judgment even if it has been made publicly accessible by other means.

This change will affect the right to first publication, reasonable use, and determination of whether the work has been previously made public in some infringement cases.

The third is public works of art.

The "outdoors public spaces" in the old rule are adjusted to "public spaces" where the public performs the display, painting, photography or video of the qualifying works of art, and the applicable spaces therefore change when the results are used within a reasonable scope; but this does not mean that it can be reproduced, set up or publicly disseminated without permission in the original way of the work.

The fourth is directly related to the news industry.

Explain the border of copyright in the further processing of "simple facts" The fact itself is not because it is first by a media to become its private property, but the distribution of the simple facts formed by others should indicate the source.

Two things must be distinguished here: a fire, a court ruling, a case that can be independently by different media; how journalists investigate, select materials, organize passages and expressions can form specific works that are protected by copyright.

Therefore, the new interpretation actually draws two lines: the fact can continue to report that someone else’s articles cannot be copied directly because they are online; information sharing is not the same as expressing the results for free.

The Supreme Law also clarified that the new interpretation came into effect on September 1.For a large number of websites that rely on automatic scraping, RSS, reproduction and content aggregation operations, the real need to re-check is not "no indication of source" as simple, but whether the right to copy the work itself is obtained.

Indicate the source to solve the issue of signature and authorize to solve the issue of copyright.The two are never the same.