Lawyers commissioned by Japan’s top eight porn companies said in Taipei yesterday that they planned to sue local telecommunication and cable operators for allowing unauthorized copies of copyrighted adult videos to be downloaded or broadcast from Internet, cellphone and MOD-based services.
On behalf of their Japanese clients, lawyers Michael Chien (簡啟煜) and Alex Chen (陳世英) called a press conference yesterday and accused Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan Mobile (台灣大哥大), TransAsia Telecommunications Inc (泛亞電信), VIBO (威寶電信) and some cable TV operators of making huge profits by spreading unlawful copies of the adult videos.
On behalf of the Japanese companies, the lawyers called for negotiations within a month with Internet providers, cable TV operators and mobile phone service providers on the issue of authorization. Otherwise, the attorneys said, they would bring commercial piracy suits against the Taiwanese firms.
The eight adult video producers have a 30 percent market share in the industry in Japan, Chien said, adding that the practice of circulating the unauthorized copies of the copyrighted adult videos in Taiwan over the years has resulted in an estimated annual loss of several billion NT dollars.
They also called on the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to establish a management system to protect the copyright and the National Communication Commission (NCC) crack down.
At a separate setting, Wang Mei-hua (王美花), director-general of the IPO, said the question of whether porn films should be subject to copyright protection hinges on the opinions of the courts rather than the Copyright Act (著作權法).
Meanwhile, NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said the NCC cannot review the contents of the programs in advance and the NCC was not the proper authority.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHELLEY SHAN AND CNA
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