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Mon, Oct 20, 2003 - Page 11　News List

`You can't stop the kids sharing files'

In response to claims by the music industry that the sharing of digital music or MP3 files by peer-to-peer (P2P) technology infringes their copyrights and deprives them of royalty fees, the Intellectual Property Office announced recently that the Internet was to be the next battlefront in the war against piracy. Taipei Times staff reporter Bill Heaney talked to James Chen, chief executive officer of Kuro.com.tw -- the developers of Taiwan's largest file-sharing community with 500,000 users -- to find out what all the fuss is about

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But the problem we have at the moment is bandwidth. ADSL in Taiwan is just not fast enough. It is 1.5 megabytes per second. The minimum you need for downloading movie files in 6 megabytes per second.

TT: Recent cases launched by the RIAA in the US and the IFPI here have put music consumers -- and your customers -- in court. Has this hurt your business and how do you react to these tactics?

Chen: Recent changes to the Copyright Law (著作權法) said that if you make less than five copies of a song, or the market value of your copy is less than NT$30,000, you are not breaking the law. Also many users buy a CD and make copies for personal use - that is reasonable. You can't say people can't copy CDs onto their computer. We have lost 10 to 15 percent of our business. But users quickly forget. The behavior model has changed. Users listen to music as MP3 files now, not CDs.

TT: But the changes to Copyright Law also gave rights holders the right to claim royalties for songs that are distributed over the Internet. Doesn't that apply?

Chen: The definition is if you are distributing the song for commercial purposes, so this does not apply to P2P. Users of P2P are not collecting money, they are sharing the file. It is not a business activity.

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