Justice minister faces heat over IPR

In response to criticism from the entertainment industry, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) yesterday pledged to support an amendment to the copyright law that would make movie and music piracy a crime.

Chen made the remarks after meeting with representatives of the Taiwan Anti-Piracy Coalition at the Justice Department yesterday. The coalition, which has members from the local and international entertainment industry, complained that the minister was not doing enough to protect their intellectual property.

While welcoming Chen's support of the copyright law amendment, representatives were disappointed with the ministry's performance. They pointed out that one in every two disks sold in Taiwan is pirated and prosecutions -- which actually dropped last year, dubbed the year of intellectual property by the government -- never result in sentences longer than six months. Offenders can even opt to pay a fine of only NT$900 per day as an alternative to prison.

The change to the copyright law would allow police and prosecutors to proceed with cases without receiving a complaint from the entertainment industry. Currently local representatives of Hollywood studios have to file a complaint before an arrest can be made in a pirated movie case.

Chen did not give a timetable for when the law would be presented to the Legislative Yuan.

"I'm not satisfied," Ming Tu (涂銘), managing director of Twentieth Century Fox Taiwan, said. "We'd like to see some real action rather than just a formal speech."

Tu's company had lost between NT$300 million and NT$400 million on recent films Die Another Day and Hero alone due to piracy.

"I don't think the government is very serious about copyright infringement," said Hank Kwo (郭戎), executive director of the Motion Picture Association Taiwan, which represents Disney, Fox, MGM, Paramount, Universal and Warner Brothers. "The minister said copyright infringement is not a serious crime, so he can't tell his staff to prosecute too hard."

Kwo's organization reported last month that the number of successful prosecutions for movie piracy dropped by 36 percent last year to just 671 cases.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment Taiwan, which owns the rights to Disney, lost half of its revenue to pirates last year, the company's vice president Kenny Wang (王秀文) said.

"We sampled about 1,000 people last year and asked them months before the release of Monsters Inc whether they had seen the movie at home -- 51 percent had," Wang said.

Chen said his department only had 800 prosecutors and 150 cases to deal with each month in addition to IPR cases. He also pointed the finger at Taiwanese frugality.

"If children are told by their parents that it's OK to buy a pirated disk to save money, then we'll never get rid of the problem," Chen said.

In its commitment to fighting IPR infringement, Taiwan compares unfavorably with other countries in the region. Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, has an IPR task force of 200 prosecutors, but Wang told the minister that this is not enough, as Hong Kong has a population of 6 million and 600 officers, three times as many as Taiwan.

One legal expert is concerned that the government's slow movement on IPR protection is harming the nation's economy.

"This is not about a few movies," said John Eastwood, a lawyer at Winkler Partners and co-chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the European Chamber of Commerce in Taipei. "This is about the future of Taiwan's economy," he said.