Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) yesterday responded to a challenge by CD pirates and said that the ministry's crackdown on such piracy will never stop.
A TV news story yesterday reported that the pirated editions of many new movies, such as Die Another Day and Hero, are now available in both VCD and DVD formats at the price of NT$100 each at night markets.
On the TV news footage, a DVD player was playing the credits of Die Another Day, but the pirates had added a sub-credit onto the video which read, "Catch me if you can, Chen Ding-nan!"
PHOTO: CHEN EN-HUI, TAIPEI TIMES
"Their behavior is really rampant. But let me take advantage of this free propaganda via the media to again remind them that prosecutors never stop cracking down on piracy," said Chen when he was approached by reporters yesterday.
Die Another Day is officially scheduled to start showing in theaters on Jan. 31 and Hero is scheduled to start showing on Jan. 17.
Chen said it was unbelievable that Taiwan's pirates would dare to challenge law-enforcement officers by humiliating them in the illegal publications they are selling.
"It is unbelievable and unforgivable. If these pirates believe that they will never be caught, they are dreaming," the minister said.
In addition to the Ministry of Justice's response, the Ministry of Finance's Intellectual Property Office also made a public announcement regarding illegal piracy and said that their officials will keep working with law-enforcement officers to crack down on pirated publications.
"It is our understanding that many pirates hire newspaper distributors to insert their advertisements for illegal publications into newspapers when these papers are distributed," said Lu Wen-hsiang (盧文祥), the deputy director of the Intellectual Property Office.
"Let me remind you, this kind of behavior by the distributors is also illegal and prosecutors will charge them as co-criminals, too. So, do not do it," he said.
According to the Intellectual Property Office, law-enforcement officers managed a total of 5,118 cases concerning abuses of intellectual property rights last year. The cases involved confiscated pirated publications worth approximately NT$10 billion.
"Compared with 2001, the total number of cases decreased from 5,270 to 5,118 -- but the total estimated value of confiscated pirated publications increased from NT$8.2 billion to NT$10 billion," said Tsai Lien-sheng (
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods