The legislature decided to differentiate between the liability to be borne by celebrities and members of the general public for endorsing false advertising when it passed an amendment to the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法) yesterday.
According to the amendment, the compensation a member of the public can be forced to pay to consumers seeking redress from the former’s false endorsement may not exceed 10 times the payment the endorser received from the advertiser.
The Legislative Yuan had passed another amendment to the act in June demanding that endorsers — whether celebrities or members of the public — be held liable jointly with advertisers for damages arising from endorsement they give when they know or are able to know that their views are misleading.
However, the move was criticized by Netizens, who said that the rule was unfair to endorsers from the general public — such as bloggers — whose realm of influence is narrower compared with that of celebrities.
“It is a widely accepted practice in other countries that even general members of the public are required to reveal that they are paid to give their endorsements,” said Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群), spokesman for the Fair Trade Commission.
“Since the law did not require the revelation of this information, it is reasonable to impose civil liability on general endorsers so that they would be responsible for their endorsement,” Sun said.
To prevent price-fixing, the legislature also passed an amendment stating that businesses which seriously violate the law may face a fine of up to 10 percent of their sales revenues in the previous year, instead of the regular fine of a maximum of NT$25 million (US$830,000) or a maximum of NT$50 million for repeat offenders.
It also approved an amendment to Tax Collection Act (稅捐稽徵法) extending the deadline for pursuing tax evaders who ran up more than NT$500,000 in arrears by five years to March 4, 2017.
Had the amendment not cleared the legislature, the treasury stood to lose NT$126.3 billion by March 5 next year.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai