Coalition responds to protest
The Taiwan Anti-piracy Coalition said yesterday that a student protest against proposed changes to intellectual property (IP) laws was misguided, the coalition said in a statement.
The student group protested outside the Ministry of Justice Tuesday against proposed changes to the nation's Copyright Law that will bring it in line with the international practice of allowing police to initiate busts on movie, software and music pirates.
Currently, the companies that produce disk content have to file a complaint with the police before a raid can take place. The students claimed the government was acting on pressure from the American entertainment industry and that the proposed changes would make it a crime to download content from the Internet, to burn CD copies and to photocopy expensive books the average student could not afford. A group representing the music industry, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry, said Taiwanese performers are hurt more by piracy than foreign companies and welcomed the changes to the Copyright Law.
March plant closures double
Factory closures almost doubled in March as some manufacturers trimmed output on the island or moved to be nearer their customers in China, where wages and other costs are lower.
Factory closures rose to 415 from 211 a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. New factory registrations rose 4 percent to 342 last month.
Taiwanese companies' investment in China almost doubled in the first three months compared with the year earlier, an Investment Commission said earlier this week.
In the first three months, factory closures rose 40 percent to 1,001 from 716 in the same period a year earlier. New factory registrations rose 12 percent to 945 from 843 a year earlier.
Twinhead sheds its employees
Twinhead International Corp (倫飛電腦), which makes notebook computers for Sharp Corp, cut four-fifths of its workforce at a factory located in the Tafa Industrial Park (大發工業區) in Kaohsiung County, the Central News Agency reported yesterday.
Twinhead would let go 96 employees this time as it wants to shift production to factories in China, limiting job openings in Taiwan, the report said, citing no one.
The company sacked more than 350 employees at the same factory in 2001.
MOF will not raise surcharge
The Ministry of Finance has no plans to raise the health surcharge on cigarettes at this time, Minister Lin Chuan (林全) said yesterday at the Legislative Yuan, as several lawmakers expressed concerns about the steady drop in the average age of local smokers and the continued rise in the young and female smoking populations.
Lawmakers suggested the ministry raise the health surcharge on cigarettes from the current NT$5 per pack to NT$8 as part of efforts to discourage smoking. They also demanded the state-owned Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp (TTL, 台灣菸酒公司) enlarge its health warning label on its tobacco packaging.
Lin said Taiwan's tax rate on alcohol is higher than that of some countries while its cigarette tax falls below the world average. He pointed out that if the cigarette health surcharge is raised too high, the move may fuel smuggling and black market trade.
NT Dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday turned strong against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.004 to close at NT$34.812 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
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