A Great Deal of Pirated Goods Were Seized In Police’s Raid, While It Is Difficult To Stamp Out Piracy.

National Police Agency initiated a 3-day “Counterfeit Raid No. 8” investigation taskforce in order to effectively contain piracy on the Internet and in the market, to cut smuggling through the land, air, and sea, and to search and wipe out the plants and warehouses involved in manufacture and storage of pirated goods.  The raid action resulted in a seizure of 124 cases involving copyright infringement with more than 15000 pieces of pirated music, visual-audio, and game disks seized in the estimated value of more than NT$200,000,000.  The massive number of seizure presents the taskforce’s competence and unreserved efforts, while it also reveals the rampancy of piracy and counterfeiting activities.  Raid action seems able to produce only temporary containment of such illegal activities.

People’s weak awareness of IP rights has sometimes ignorantly made themselves part of piracy activities.  Facilitated with the anonymous and trans-boundary characteristics, the Internet serves as an effective cover of pirating activities and, on the other hand, forms an extreme difficulty in the law-enforcing authorities’ raid action.  According to the estimation made by the Economic Affairs Division of National Police Agency, though the government has strived against counterfeiting activities, the piracy rate still stands at about 40%. (2005.11)

/CCS