Amendments to the Copyright Law (
"The International Federation for the Phonographic Industry [IFPI] Taiwan represents the majority of the record industry in Taiwan and is dissatisfied with the amendments," Robin Lee (
Changes that define whether piracy is for profit or not have set a threshold that will allow not-for-profit offenders to get off scot-free, Lee said.
On Friday, the legislature said that making more than five copies of a product -- or copies that were worth more than NT$30,000 on the street if sold as legal copies in the original packaging -- constitutes a copyright violation "without intent to profit." The penalty for this crime was increased to a maximum of three years in prison and fines of up to NT$750,000 from the current NT$200,000.
By defining this threshold, those that make fewer than five copies will automatically be decriminalized, Lee said.
If the crime is considered to be for profit, the penalty increases to five years in prison and a fine of up to NT$5 million. A large-scale optical disk counterfeiting operation which is run as "a vocation" would risk a maximum seven-year jail term and fines of up to NT$8 million (US$230,548).
A legal expert agreed that the wording on intent to profit could be exploited.
"This is a distinction I am sure infringers will take advantage of, and indeed there will be infringers who will now try to set up their businesses around this rule," said John Eastwood, a lawyer at Winkler Partners (博仲法律事務所) and co-chair of the Intellectual Property Committee of the European Cham-ber of Commerce in Taipei.
There may be more problems ahead. Using the Internet to sell illegal copies of software, movies and music is one area that the law does not sufficiently address, Eastwood said.
Some infringers have claimed they do not make copies. They say the computer user at the other end who downloads material and then burns a copy onto their hard disk or a compact disk are the actual violators. The new law does not clarify this, making more problems ahead for the legislators, Eastwood said.
The passage of the revised law last week was initially well-received by the international business community as it allowed police for the first time to initiate raids on suspected counterfeiters. Before the change, the rights holder had to make a complaint before the police could act.
"It is now a lot easier for the police to take action without waiting for a rights holder to make a complaint first," Eastwood said. "This is what the industry had been pushing for."
But business leaders and officials called for strict enforcement of the new law.
"Although the law has been passed, how to effectively enforce the law is the key," Wu Shan-chun (吳山春), chairman of the Taiwan Anti-piracy Coalition, a group representing the movie, software and music industries said last Friday.
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