Proposed Criminal Sanction against P2P Service Providers Opposed by Nonpartisan　Legislators at Second Legislative Reading of Proposed Amendment to Copyright Act.

Due to the objection from nonpartisan legislators, the criminal sanction proposed against P2P service providers receiving interests from violating another’s copyright is to be referred to legislative negotiation among all parties.

 

The local music and movie industries both have looked forward to the regulation of peer-to-peer downloads.  Despite the initial legislative passage of the proposed amendment, the nonpartisan group protested the proposed criminal sanction against peer-to-peer service providers at the second legislative review meeting.  Some legislators consider P2P service providers who provide platform and free download application but pay nothing to the copyright holders are acting in serious violation of the legal rights and interests of the copyright holder by earning profit from collecting procedural charges and network maintenance fees from users of the platform and application provided by them to download literal and/or audio-visual work owned by others.  According to the amendment as of the preliminary legislative review, P2P service provider may be sentenced to not more than 2 years in prison, detention and/or a punitive fine of not more than NTD500,000, and ordered to suspend operation.

 

The proposed amendment will be referred to the Legislative Yuan meeting if no consensus among all parties is reached in conclusion of the negotiation on the proposed sanction against P2P service providers by next legislative session scheduled to commence 19 September 2006.  (2006.05)

/EMA