Key takeaways:
- Hangzhou Huatai Yimei Cultural Media Co., Ltd. v. Shenzhen Daotong Technology Development Co., Ltd. (2018) is the first case discussing and confirming the admissibility of blockchain evidence in Chinese courts.
- Chinese courts not only take an open attitude to the blockchain evidence, but also guides the parties to use this technology for evidence preservation.
- From the case of Hangzhou Huatai Yimei in 2018 to the SPC online litigation rules in 2021, China is establishing a blockchain evidence rule system step by step.
In June 2018, Hangzhou Internet Court (hereinafter the “Hangzhou Court”) decided in a case that the electronic evidence preserved through a blockchain-based third-party platform (hereinafter the “blockchain evidence”) was legal and reliable. (See Hangzhou Huatai Yimei Cultural Media Co., Ltd. v. Shenzhen Daotong Technology Development Co., Ltd. (2018) Zhe 0192 Min Chu No. 81 ((2018)浙0192民初81号))
This is the first time that China acknowledges the legal effect of blockchain evidence. Since then, Chinese courts have been gradually improving the rules of blockchain evidence. The latest result is the online litigation rules issued by China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) in June 2021. The rules provide for the review of blockchain evidence, and are the most systematic provisions up to now.
Now, let’s go over this first-ever landmark case in 2018, which marks the starting point of the establishment of rules of blockchain evidence in China.
I. Case background
The defendant Shenzhen Daotong Technology Development Co., Ltd. (深圳市道同科技发展有限公司) is the owner of a website, while the plaintiff Hangzhou Huatai Yimei Cultural Media Co., Ltd. (杭州华泰一媒文化传媒有限公司) is the copyright owner of an article.
The plaintiff alleged that the defendant published the article on the defendant’s website without its prior consent.
To prevent the defendant from deleting the web page on which the article was published, making it unable to prove the infringement, the plaintiff transmitted the URL of the web page to a third-party preservation platform through an API interface.
The third-party platform used Google open-source program puppeter plug-in to screenshot the target web page, and generated operation log to record the call time and processing content. Then it obtained the source code and related call information of the target web page by calling curl (an open-source program working under the command line of URL syntax), and generated the operation log to record the call time and processing content.
Then, the platform packaged the screenshot and web page source code, calculated its SHA-256 hash value, and uploaded them to the Factom blockchain and the Bitcoin blockchain simultaneously.
After that, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit with the Hangzhou Court, requesting to hold the defendant liable for infringement.
The Hangzhou Court decided on 27 June 2018 that the foregoing blockchain evidence was admissible, and the defendant shall be liable for infringement accordingly.
II. Court opinions
The Hangzhou Court reviewed the admissibility of relevant electronic evidence from three aspects: the qualification of the third-party platform, the credibility of the technical means used to capture the infringing web page, and the integrity of the electronic evidence preserved in the blockchain.
1. Qualification of the third-party platform
The Hangzhou Court held that the owners and shareholders of the third-party platform were neither related to the plaintiff nor the defendant, thus having a neutral standing.
2. Credibility of the technical means used to capture the infringing web page
First, the third-party platform was secure. The third-party platform is deployed in Alibaba Cloud. In general, Alibaba Cloud will not be infected by viruses and Trojans. Moreover, the platform has also been certified by relevant Chinese departments in terms of network security.
Second, Given the third-party platform called puppeter to capture the web page and calls curl to get the source code of the target web page (these two tools are less likely to be tampered with during use), data tampering was pretty much impossible in the process of web page capturing by the third-party platform.
3. Integrity of the electronic evidence preserved in blockchain
In order to confirm that the electronic data had been uploaded to the blockchain, the Hangzhou Court reviewed the data from two aspects: whether the electronic data was actually uploaded and whether the uploaded electronic data was the electronic data in dispute.
First, the electronic data had been uploaded to the blockchain. The plaintiff found that the hash value of the contents contained in the block node in the Bitcoin blockchain was consistent with that of the contents stored in the Factom blockchain. Therefore, the Hangzhou Court confirmed that the third-party platform had uploaded the electronic data to the Factom blockchain and the Bitcoin blockchain.
Second, the electronic data in blockchain was the infringing web page data captured by the third-party platform. The hash value of the web page data downloaded by the plaintiff on the third-party platform was consistent with that of the electronic data submitted by the plaintiff under blockchain preservation. Therefore, the Hangzhou Court confirmed that the electronic data involved in this case had been uploaded to the Factom blockchain and the Bitcoin blockchain, and had been preserved integrally without any modification since uploading.
Finally, the Hangzhou Court held that it should, on a case-by-case basis, determine the effectiveness and admissibility of the electronic data preserved by blockchain technology and the like with an open and impartial attitude. According to the above analysis, the Hangzhou Court decided that the blockchain evidence, in this case, shall be admissible for determining the infringement.
III. Our comments
This is the first copyright infringement case involving the blockchain evidence in China. Copyright infringement is very common in the Internet era, and electronic evidence is the most common type of evidence of such cases.
How to preserve electronic evidence and how to prevent it from being tampered with are the problems faced by Chinese courts.
Blockchain technology is a decentralized database. The evidence preserved by the parties using this technology may become effective evidence for finding the copyright infringement.
Therefore, Chinese courts not only take an open attitude to the blockchain evidence, but also guides the parties to use this technology for evidence preservation.
From the case in 2018 to the online litigation rules in 2021, China is establishing a blockchain evidence rule system step by step.
Photo by Naitian（Tony） Wang on Unsplash
Contributors: Meng Yu 余萌
