A 27-year-old woman was yesterday given a suspended prison term of six months for secretly recording and selling lecture sessions, and unauthorized copies of class materials.
The Taiwan High Court upheld a previous ruling by the Intellectual Property Court and found the defendant, surnamed Chen (陳), guilty of violating the Copyright Act (著作權法), sentencing her to six months in prison, suspended for two years. The High Court’s decision was final.
Chen, a student in a software engineering graduate program, signed up for courses offered by a Taipei cram school operated by Taiwan Knowledge Bank Co (TKB) in 2009, enrolling in the “Computer Operating System” class taught by Hung Yi (洪逸), according to a court statement.
Evidence gathered by prosecutors showed that Chen started selling unauthorized copies of the lectures in April 2011, offering customers lecture notes and voice recordings of Hung.
Prosecutors said Chen secretly recorded the lectures, without the teacher’s knowledge or consent, and produced CDs to sell online, which also contained lecture notes from Hung’s class.
Investigations revealed that the CDs contained more than 60 hours of Hung’s lectures and that Chen sold them for NT$250 apiece.
Chen’s operation was discovered by an employee of TKB, who then purchased a set online.
In the Intellectual Property Court’s ruling, the judge stated that Hung had spent effort and creative capacity to produce his own original course materials, which were not copied from other sources, and that his oral lectures in the classroom also had originality.
The court found Chen guilty of violating the act, for selling recordings of lectures and course materials, as no authorization or consent had been obtained from Hung or TKB, and as she was motivated by profit.
During the trial, Chen said the course materials were not original and she was only selling her own notes she took during classes.
Chen said that she only put her own lecture notes on sale and that the sound recordings were gifts to accompany the product.
She added that she put work into editing and arranging the sound recordings and that she did not know the sale of teaching materials was unlawful.
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