ezPeer and IFPI End Legal Battle and Mark a New Era of Legal P2P Service.

  Online and digital music in Taiwan has been moving into a legal scenario.  ezPeer, the second largest peer-to-peer operator, announced on June 29, 2006 that they have reached agreement with International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and will establish a new company to distribute authorized music in the form of P2P, making it the first legal P2P service operator that reaches license agreement with record companies.

 

  After the new ezPeer, “ezPeer plus”, to be opened online, P2P users will be able to swap music files stored in their PCs as long as these files swapped are among the list of the tracks authorized by record companies.  The revenues therefrom will proportionately go to the record companies, composers, lyricists, and right holders of public broadcast by the downloading frequency of the authorized tracks.  However, those tracks unauthorized are not allowed to be exchanged on the platform and will be filtered. 

 

  For the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by IFPI against ezPeer, even though the district court rendered a judgment in favor of ezPeer in 2005, ezPeer has been seeking legal license and finally arrives at an agreement with IFPI through repeated negotiations.

 

  ezPeer’s rival and another P2P operator with the largest subscriber base, Kuro may also favor a reconciliation and will in the near future announce a settlement to be reached with IFPI.  Chunghwa Investment Holding Company of Chunghwa Telecom Co. is reportedly planning to put 4 hundred million dollars into Kuro to help it obtain license from record industry. 

 

  Kuro’s top management were found guilty of violating IPR last year in the lawsuit initiated by IFPI.  Following that, Kuro determined to file an appeal, while it has been pressured by a new legal P2P service model and hoped to work toward that direction.  It is notable that Kuro and IFPI are in talks on a settlement to end the battle and Kuro is expected to transform into a legal P2P operator in the second half of 2006 to make its business sustainable.  Taiwan’s online music operators will no longer be rivals but will turn to legal partners to record companies. (2006.6) 

/CCS