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Douglas Paal urged Legislative Yuan not to backpedal on the Amendment to Copyright Law. The Administrative Yuan version must be further amended.
E031019Y3 Nov. 2003（E48）
Douglas Paal, director of the Taipei Office of the American Institute in Taiwan, strongly suggested our government to revise the Draft Amendment to Copyright Law, so as to develop the authorization system based on an IPR-friendly environment, and to strengthen the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection mechanism.
Douglas Paal made a speech at an Asia-Pacific conference of the World Trade Law Association, with most of his remarks centering on US concerns in Taiwan’s lack of effort in IPR protection. The US industries, heavily relying on the IPR protection, have suffered an enormous loss in trade up to US$ 750 millions last year, said Paal. While the annual U.S. – Taiwan trade deficit has reached US$ 9 billions, the clumsy IPR protection mechanism has led the situation from bad to worse, and consequently made Taiwan lose its appeal to foreign investors.
Paal continued to stress that, three flaws in the Copyright Law have been particularly brought to U.S. attention. Firstly, the insufficient punishments, or lack of minimum penalties in certain offenses, have made some criminals, especially those with obscure motivations for profit making, free from legal liabilities. The relevant provisions, said Paal, have narrowed down the scope of IPR infringements to the actual distribution, rather than the public display or possession of the pirated CD-ROMs. And as a result thereof, the police can raid only on the night market stalls that sell the pirated CD-ROMs, but helpless with the investigation of crimes in different modes, i.e. the ransom photocopy of textbooks. Secondly, effective IPR protection in the digital and cyber environment would be critical to Taiwan, as some organizational criminals might take advantage of the flaws in the amended Copyright Law for wrong deeds. Thirdly, the newly amended Copyright Law has failed to entitle the Customs to take necessary measures against the import or export goods that have caught in suspicion of IPR infringement, and this defect in law shall never exempt Taiwan from being the major supplier of the pirated films, music and computer software.
