Citing significant financial losses due to piracy, copyright holders' groups yesterday announced a series of operations targeting rental video shops who illegally rent or sell pirated products.
"We know that Taiwan's government is firmly committed to crack down on piracy, but it does still exist here," Frank Rittman, vice president of the Motion Picture Association's Asia Pacific region, said at a press conference yesterday in Taipei.
The raids -- launched by the MPA and its local arm, the Foundation for the Protection of Film and Video Works in conjunction with local law enforcement -- began last month and will proceed throughout the year.
Within that short period of time, the operations have netted over 68,000 pirated CDs and DVDs and more than 50 optical disc burners, and led to the arrest of 12 individuals involved in unauthorized manufacturing activities, according to the association's statistics.
Rittman said Taiwan has made progress in protecting intellectual property rights, as evidenced by the Office of the US Trade Representative's (USTR) removal of Taiwan from the "Special 301" Priority Watch List to the less stringent Watch List last month. The USTR had put Taiwan on the priority watch list for four consecutive years, until then.
The nation's legislature passed new amendments to the Copyright Law (
But there is still work to do, Rittman said yesterday.
The association further released a report on anti-piracy actions in the region last year, showing that there were over 50 million pirated VCDs, DVDs and CDs seized, and 3,156 burners confiscated, mainly from China, Hong Kong and Malaysia. The estimated loss from such piracy was US$896 million in potential revenue, the report said.
Globally, illegal burning activities have cost the movie industry US$3.5 billion per year, an amount that doesn't include online piracy, Rittman added.
In Taiwan, a total of 1,775 optical disc burners were seized in the operations, which represented 56 percent of total MPA seizures in the Asia-Pacific region last year, the association said.
The results show that piracy by burning is a problem in the region, and that criminal activity has shifted from mass production in factories to burn-to-order operations run out of residences, making the investigations even harder, Rittman said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six