Companies that invest in file-sharing or peer-to-peer Web sites and those that help them collect their monthly subscription fees should reconsider co-operating with the sites now that prosecutors have filed charges against Taiwan's largest on-line file-sharing site, Kuro.com.tw (
"The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry [IFPI] Taiwan calls for existing investors and potential investors to seriously consider their investments in unauthorized peer-to-peer network operators," IFPI Taiwan branch secretary-general Robin Lee (
The IFPI, which represents 10 local and international record labels, has claimed that Kuro and similar sites infringe on their members' copyrights by allowing subscribers to share and download music files without paying royalty fees.
In August the federation took the complaint to prosecutors. Last Thursday, the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office formally filed charges against three senior directors at Kuro and one subscriber, claiming they infringe on the nation's recently amended Copyright Law (
Kuro has 500,000 subscribers, according to the site's operators, each paying NT$99 per month to use the peer-to-peer service that allows them to find friends, share music and video files, and access a digital magazine.
Companies that currently collect the monthly subscription fee for Kuro include big names such as President Chain Store Corp (
"IFPI seriously advises those who collect money on Kuro's behalf to reconsider the legality of their business activities with Kuro," Lee said.
Kuro fired back yesterday that the IFPI was in for a fight.
"We take the tactics they are using very seriously as we think it will do some damage to our allies," Kuro spokesman Philip Wang (王立文) told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"This is war. We will do something to enhance our relationships with our allies," Wang said, without elaborating.
Wang said a more sinister desire to control how music is packaged and sold is the reason for the music industry's relentless pursuit of his company.
"They are targeting Kuro as Kuro is a threat to traditional music publishing channels," he said. "That is why they are trying by all means to kill us."
An offer to charge Kuro users an extra NT$50 per month as a form of royalty for the music industry was rejected, showing the IFPI was not serious about coming to an agreement, Wang said.
The IFPI's campaign against Kuro may have had some success. Government-owned Chunghwa Telecom Co's (
But others are adopting a wait-and-see approach.
"This is an ongoing case and it is not suitable to talk about the legality of Kuro's business until we see the final result. But if the outcome is that Kuro is illegal, FarEasTone would certainly not want to be associated with any illegal business," said FarEas-Tone vice president Liang Jin-lin (梁錦琳).
The news comes as Taiwan tries to show it is cracking down on intellectual property rights infringers in the face of criticism from foreign governments. In October, the government announced that the Internet was its new front in the war against piracy after successfully increasing seizures of bootlegged audio, video and software disks this year. The case against Kuro is the first criminal case against a peer-to-peer Web site here.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS