Government officials yesterday threw their support behind students who had their computers seized last week for allegedly downloading illegal MP3 music files.
Minister of Education Ovid Tzeng (
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
A police search of the dorm rooms of 14 students at National Chengkung University (
"Any action of prosecutors and the police should be taken with prudence and kept within limits with respect to academic freedom and the autonomy of universities," Tzeng said.
"I will absolutely fight for the rights of students regarding the incident of the police searching the Chengkung student dorm," Tzeng added. "I will ask attorneys to help the students settle any legal disputes stemming from this incident."
Tzeng said the ministry hopes the public will have access to and enjoy sharing information on the Web as long as copyrights are respected.
"Current regulations are hardly sufficient, considering what is needed in these `E-times.' We need to cope with disputes regarding the use of Internet resources with more patience and intelligence," the minister said.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an umbrella group representing the record industry in Taiwan, also seems to have softened its attitude toward the students as more and more advocates of students' rights have spoken up in recent days.
"Only when we know whether the downloaded files are the property of our member record labels will we decide whether we'll take any action," Robin Lee (李瑞斌), IFPI secretary-general, said yesterday.
Vice Minister of Education Fan Sun-lu (
Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (
Chen also said that the ministry's policy was to give priority to serious "black gold" crimes in its crackdown on intellectual property rights violations, saying he never asked prosecutors to target university students in the investigation.
According to ministry guidelines issued in November, when prosecutors plan to conduct search and seizure raids at "special places," they have to report to their divisional head and prosecutor general. The latter will then report to his or her superior prosecutors' office.
The "special places" listed in the guidelines include government departments, secret military sites, the Legislative Yuan, county and city councils, institutions of higher education and offices of the media.
Also See Editorial Inside
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the