12 July, 2007
P2P Amendments to the Copyright Act Become Law
The Legislative Yuan passed proposed amendments to Taiwan's Copyright Act in June broadening the scope of the definition of copyright infringement to include the provision of software or services for profit that enable the unauthorized public transmission or reproduction of copyrighted works via the internet. The key element of the offense is the inducement of the public to infringe and not any actual infringement by the public.
The amendments, which came into force on 14 July 2007, will, however, have little serious effect on the local market and seem to have passed more to placate concerns raised in the USTR’s annual Special 301 report. The two major illicit file sharing services that spurred the amendments, Kuro and EZPeer, both settled cases with the IFPI in 2005 and now operate legitimately. And it appears that the sites that sprung up to replace them to cater to the local market’s taste for pirated content have set up offshore.
