On November 11, 2020, the 23rd meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress voted and passed the decision on amending the Copyright Law, which came into effect on June 1st, 2021. Provisions on copyright protection in cyberspace, especially the upper limit of legal compensation for infringement had been perfected, and principle of punitive damages were also clarified. 

The new Copyright Law, which had come into effect on June 1, 2021, mainly includes the following new points.

1. Newly addition of provisions on punitive damages

This amendment has added provisions on punitive damages, raised the upper limit of legal compensation to 5 million yuan, and made it clear that the lower limit of legal compensation is 500 yuan. After the implementation of this amendment, if music, literature and other platforms continue to provide services to view and download works, and if there are situations that the works are not off the shelf or the profit is huge despite the repeated expiration reminder of the license cooperation, such acts may be identified as malicious infringement, thus triggering punitive damages mechanism. 

2. Revision on definition of works and the object types of works; Unifying the film works and film style video works into the genre of audio-visual works. 

This revision revised the definition on works, and emphasized that works protected by Copyright Law need to have a form that can be perceived by people, and made it clear that inner thoughts are not protected by law.  Meanwhile, revisions were made on types of works in the new Copyright Law, and "film works and works created by methods similar to those adopted in making a film" were changed to "audio-visual works". This revision broadened the original film style works to audio-visual works, thus covering a wider range, including online courses, live webcasts and other emerging fields. 

3. Expanding the scope of broadcasting rights

The amendment further clarifies the boundary between broadcasting right and information network dissemination right, and makes clearer the scope of legal application of both rights.

4. It is clarified that the copyright collective management organization is a non-profit legal person, with standardized management and information disclosure.

The new regulations characterize copyright collective management organizations as non-profit legal persons, which means that Music Copyright Society of China and other organizations are not allowed to manage copyright for profit. 

In addition, the new Copyright Law also stipulates the ownership of actors' performance rights and the copyright ownership of cooperative works, improves the fair use of works by disabled people, clarifies the penalties faced by abuse of rights, and the rules of inversion of burden of proof in copyright infringement litigation.