The recording industry is suffering as consumers continue to download free or low-cost music over the Internet, despite the legitimacy of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing services being in doubt, recording industry officials said yesterday.
Two Taiwanese P2P operators, Ezpeer.com.tw and kuro.com.tw (
"I'm sorry to see that consumers still choose P2P to get music instead using legal avenues," said Robin Lee (
Last August IFPI's Taiwan office filed criminal charges against the two P2P operators, alleging copyright infringements.
According to IFPI statistics, sales in the country of legitimate recorded music fell from NT$5.92 billion in 2001 to NT$4.98 billion in 2002, and fell again to NT$4.47 billion last year.
Kuro, the nation's largest P2P file-sharing site, charges a monthly fee of NT$99 from its members for unlimited file swapping, and provides a one-month free trial for new members. Ezpeer has a similar fee structure.
Kuro spokesman Eric Yang (楊智謀) said yesterday the company has more than 500,000 subscribers.
Defending Kuro's legitimacy, Yang said a court in Canada ruled last month that uploading music files into the shared folders of P2P networks such as Kazaa is legal.
He cited a report last month from the Washington Post that cited a study conducted by Felix Oberholzer-Gee from Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf from the University of North Carolina that said Internet music piracy has no negative effect on sales of legitimate music.
Steven Yang (
"Consumers' who support swapping will eat their own bitter fruit when they find one day there are few quality music works available on the market," Yang said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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