The Taiwan Anti-piracy Coalition gave the government a failing grade yesterday for its piracy enforcement efforts last year. The criticism comes one year after thousands of local music fans and artists held a rally in Taipei to protest ineffective anti-piracy enforcement measures.
The coalition stopped short of organizing another protest march this year.
"Legislators are now more serious about the problem," Lin Shi-jin (林錫金), chairman of the Taiwan Anti-piracy Coalition said. He pointed to the new draft of the Copyright Law (著作權法) which is expected to be fast-tracked by the Legislative Yuan before the end of next month. The proposed changes will allow police to initiate investigations against suspected counterfeiting operations.
The entertainment industry currently has to launch its own investigations and lodge a complaint with the authorities before the police can take action.
Last year -- dubbed the year of intellectual property (IP) protection by the Executive Yuan -- more than half the movies, music and software disks sold nationwide were fakes, according to leading entertainment industry organizations.
Groups include the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Business Software Association (BSA). The value of goods seized last year increased by 20 percent to top NT$8 billion, Ministry of Economic Affairs figures show, but the number of successful prosecutions dropped to 671 from over 1,000 in 2001, MPA Taiwan countered.
Despite last year's dismal record, the coalition has seen some progress this year.
"Successful police raids and seizures of counterfeit disks are on the rise," Lin said.
Police raided a factory in Taichung County last week and seized two packing machines and 190,000 forged video and audio compact discs with a street value of more than NT$67 million.
Four people were arrested in the operation.
That's just the tip of the iceberg for the local movie industry, which lost NT$1.46 billion in revenue to pirates last year, according to Hank Kwo (
At last year's march, government officials promised protesters copyright protection on the island would improve. But since then, legislators have dragged their heels on reforms, and the courts and police do not seem committed to enforcing the new laws, one expert said.
"Despite the government's effort on the improvement and innovation of intellectual property protection, the law was still not fast, powerful or accurate enough," Robin Lee (
Piracy costs the world billions of US dollars in industrial output and lengthens unemployment lines, according to a report released Thursday by US-based research firm International Data Corp (IDC).
"Globally, four out of 10 software programs -- or 40 percent -- are pirated. Reducing that rate 10 points to 30 percent could add 1.5 million jobs, increase economic growth by US$400 billion and generate US$64 billion in new taxes to help governments fund public programs like education, health care and law enforcement," IDC said in a statement. Even a single-point reduction worldwide would raise US$6 billion in new tax revenues, IDC said.
The coalition's stinging evaluation of the government's performance comes as Taiwan is eager to shake off its reputation as one of the world's worst IP rights violators. In 1992, the US Trade Representative Office placed Taiwan on its Special 301 Watch List of IP offenders, transferring Taiwan to the Priority Watch List in 2001.
RSS