Taiwan's largest online music sharing site offered to start paying royalties to the music industry yesterday. Three-year old kuro.com.tw (飛行網), which claims an online community of half a million users, offered yesterday to levy a monthly NT$50 royalty fee on top of its standard NT$99 charge and pass the money directly on to copyright holders.
One of Kuro's sister Web site's, music.com.tw (飛行網), sells CDs and downloadable music and already pays royalties to music companies. The Chinese-language name of both Web sites is the same.
The music industry and music-sharing community have been locked in legal battles since US courts ordered Napster to remove copyrighted songs from its web site in 2001. In Taiwan, recent amendments to laws relating to copyright and intellectual property permit individuals to reproduce copyrighted material providing they do not intend to profit from the copies, or in the case of music, providing they make no more than five copies.
"Our service is legal according to Taiwan law," Kuro's CEO James Chen (
Chen predicted that Kuro's users will swell to three million by the end of 2005. If each user is paying NT$50 per month, Kuro can collect NT$1.8 billion for the music industry, Chen said, which compares to NT$5.4 billion in predicted CD sales in the same year.
But a manager at a leading record label rejected the payment offer yesterday.
"We will not accept this," said Andrea Chen (陳妍君) of EMI Taiwan Ltd. "Basically they're offering a platform with legal content provided by the labels and a service where users can download free music from A, B, or C person. How can the user know that a song is from a label or not? People will still go on downloading free versions."
Kuro has also not offered to pay the music industry any compensation for the three years it has operated to date without paying royalties, Chen said.
"If they're serious, they'll show sincerity by cutting the site," Chen said. "There's no reason why Kuro cannot support a viable business model where they respect [intellectual property] rights from the beginning, as well as going to the trouble of talking to all the publishers, the recording labels and the artists."
Increasing competition from other Web sites may have prompted yesterday's offer, Chen suggested. Yahoo, Microsoft Corp and Apple Computer Inc are all considering setting up music download sites that have music industry authorization in Taiwan.
Kuro may also be trying to fend off looming legal action. Last Wednesday, the Recording Industry Association of America announced it would sue individuals who share music over the Internet without the copyright holder's permission. Local groups may follow suit, buoyed by an amendment to the Copyright Law (著作法) passed at the beginning of June.
"We [the music industry] got a new right in the recent amendments -- public transmission rights -- which now include the Internet, allowing us to collect royalties from music distributed online," said Robin Lee (
But smaller companies may be more willing to accept the Kuro model.
"The music industry is entering a new phase and it needs to find new ways of making money," Chang Yi-ping (
DIVIDED VIEWS: Although the Fed agreed on holding rates steady, some officials see no rate cuts for this year, while 10 policymakers foresee two or more cuts There are a lot of unknowns about the outlook for the economy and interest rates, but US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at least one thing seems certain: Higher prices are coming. Fed policymakers voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, as they await clarity on whether tariffs would leave a one-time or more lasting mark on inflation. Powell said it is still unclear how much of the bill would fall on the shoulders of consumers, but he expects to learn more about tariffs
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
NOT JUSTIFIED: The bank’s governor said there would only be a rate cut if inflation falls below 1.5% and economic conditions deteriorate, which have not been detected The central bank yesterday kept its key interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive quarter, aligning with market expectations, while slightly lowering its inflation outlook amid signs of cooling price pressures. The move came after the US Federal Reserve held rates steady overnight, despite pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut borrowing costs. Central bank board members unanimously voted to maintain the discount rate at 2 percent, the secured loan rate at 2.375 percent and the overnight lending rate at 4.25 percent. “We consider the policy decision appropriate, although it suggests tightening leaning after factoring in slackening inflation and stable GDP growth,”
RSS