Efforts to resolve the long-standing feud between Taiwan and the US over piracy of movies, music, business software and other intellectual property is being thwarted by the rampant use of the Internet in Taiwan to steal copyrighted works, despite gains in other areas of piracy, an umbrella group of US industries reported on Monday.
Piracy over the Ministry of Education's Internet system is also a major problem, the report said.
The report, by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), urged the US Trade Rep-resentative (USTR) office to keep Taiwan on the Special 301 Watch List for the time being at least, until the Legislative Yuan passes more stringent anti-piracy laws and enforcement is enhanced.
The USTR has traditionally listened to the industry alliance for guidance on its official action under US piracy laws and has consistently followed its recommendations.
There is no indication that the USTR will not follow the alliance's recommendations again this spring, when the government agency issues its annual report on intellectual property violators.
While Taipei and Washington have been gradually solving other trade disputes, piracy has remained a major area of contention, and removal from the Watch List is seen as a crucial step in advancing bilateral efforts to normalize trade relations.
In one bright spot in the IIPA report, the alliance recommended that the USTR conduct an "out-of-cycle review" later in the year to reconsider whether or not to drop Taiwan from the Watch List. If it dropped Taiwan, that would represent a major trade victory for the nation.
Taiwan has been on the Watch List, or the more serious Priority Watch List, since 2001.
Internet piracy, the IIPA said, "has become a pervasive and corrosive piracy problem," and "one of Taiwan's most urgent piracy problems."
P2P piracy, or peer-to-peer sharing among Internet users, continues to grow, and the highest rate of Internet infringement of business software in Asia is in Taiwan, the alliance said.
"This will threaten what is otherwise a good record on reducing software piracy in the territory," it said.
The report urges the prompt passage of legislation to clamp down on file-sharing, followed by legislative action on "ISP liability" legislation that would penalize such Internet service providers as Yahoo.
P2P legislation, which was introduced last April by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (
It would also give authorities the power to close a service once it has been convicted, an effort to prevent cases where offending service providers were convicted but continued to operate with impunity during an appeal.
The ISP legislation, also introduced by Hsieh, would also "subject ISPs to liability as co-infringers if they `gain economic benefits' and are `capable of monitoring or controlling said infringing acts by others.'"
The IIPA report also focused, as it did last year, on piracy over the government-owned TANet network.
The network "is being used widely throughout Taiwan for Internet piracy," the report says, adding that the Ministry of Education "must acknowledge its obligation and take far stronger deterrent actions" to stem illegal file sharing.
Among other suggestions, the report calls for tougher enforcement against illegal photocopying in an around university campuses and monitoring of the smuggling of optical discs to Latin America and counterfeit video game cartridges to China and elsewhere in Asia.
The report also calls on the Legislative Yuan to pass a law against the illegal piracy of movies "right off the screen by professional camcorder pirates" using video cameras to copy a movie being shown in a theater, or even earlier during a promotional showing.
TRAVEL CONFERENCE: Representatives from the two countries exchanged views on how to increase tourist numbers, with one identifying individual travel as a trend Taiwan and South Korea aim to increase the number of tourists traveling between the two countries to 3 million, government and tourism industry representatives said at a conference in Hsinchu City yesterday. The annual event was attended by Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯); Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰); Taiwan Visitors Association chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭); South Korean Representative to Taiwan Chung Byung-won; Yoon Ji-sook, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; and Korea Association of Travel Agents chairman Oh Chang-hee. Global tourism is expected to soon rebound to between 55 and
HASTY PLAN: Instructors must teach in a language they are not fluent in, while students are forced to learn new subjects in a tongue they do not know, teachers said The National Federation of Teachers Unions (NFTU) yesterday urged the government to thoroughly review its Bilingual 2030 policy, saying it has caused problems in elementary and high schools, and might affect the quality of education in other subjects. The government on March 28 changed its original “Bilingual Nation 2030” plan to the “Bilingual 2030” plan, no longer aiming to turn Taiwan into a Mandarin-English bilingual nation by 2030, NFTU president Hou Chun-liang (侯俊良) told a news conference in Taipei. Despite the change, the policy’s budget, resources and most of its content remain the same, causing unusual scenes on campuses, he said. Cheng Chi-yi
‘STILL RISKY’: The quarantine requirement for arrivals cannot be lifted, as COVID-19 cases have been rising in Europe and the US, the minister of health and welfare said The government might consider dropping a negative COVID-19 test result requirement for travelers from low-risk countries, but lifting the quarantine requirement for inbound travelers is still risky, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The CECC on Monday said it does not plan to further loosen border controls soon. National Taiwan University Children’s Hospital superintendent Huang Li-min (黃立民) said the “3+4” quarantine policy separates inbound travelers from family members for only three days, which is not enough to block the spread of the virus, so the government might consider changing it to a “0+7” policy. He also said that it might
Taiwanese singer Miu Chu (朱俐靜) passed away over the weekend after a battle with breast cancer, her family announced yesterday. She was 40 years old. The family wrote on Chu’s Facebook fan page that she died peacefully. “Thank you all for your concern. Miu, who was always full of laughter and always brought people positive energy with her music, left us peacefully on July 3,” the family said. The family asked for privacy at this time and said that details of a memorial service would be announced later. Chu was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020. She was an alumna of the TV reality show