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!"
"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 (
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