IFPI Taiwan is in for the `long haul'

There is still a long way to go for Taiwan in its efforts to stem intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement, a senior official with the Taiwan branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI, 國際唱片交流協會) said yesterday.

Although the road is thorny and full of twists and turns, Robin Lee (李瑞斌), secretary general of IFPI Taiwan, said the anti-piracy struggle will never stop and he will not be absent from the battlefield.

Lee, a graduate from the prestigious National Taiwan University Department of Law, said he was working with the nation's Consumers' Foundation (消基會) in 1986 when he decided to join a group of IPR protection activists to establish the IFPI Taiwan, as there had been an outcry from Taiwan's recording companies as well as performing artists, particularly singers, over increasingly rampant piracy of CDs and tape recordings.

Initially representing 11 Taiwan recording companies that had already joined the IFPI as members, the IFPI Taiwan has also helped the nation's recording companies export their music and publications to overseas markets while enhancing musical and other cultural interactions between Taiwan and the rest of the world, Lee said.

Lee said that his, as well as Taiwan's, history in fighting against piracy is an ordeal of sweat and blood. Explaining why he walks with a limp, Lee said that one night in 1990 as he was walking toward his home in an alley, he was cut down by two men waving commando knives. Although he survived the attack, he now walks with a permanent limp.

Attacks on him and other IPR protection activists and officials are numerous, Lee said, adding that the IFPI Taiwan offices have been attacked, while a number of IFPI Taiwan employees in charge of legal affairs were once "put under house arrest" by an unknown gangland figure.