Bloggers Convicted On Charge of Copyright Law Violation For The Act Of “Public Transmission”.

  There have been cases recently brought before district courts against bloggers and the courts have passed sentences on these bloggers who put music files on their blogs for other users’ listening and downloading.

  A trend to blogging has been overwhelming Taiwan in recent years.  Some bloggers set up and maintain their blogs mainly as an online diary, a place for them to express their personal feelings which are usually transformed into textual contents open to online users and go with beautiful melodies.  These melodies or songs going with blog contents indeed contribute to the creation of personal perceptions, while the use of melodies or songs is involved in an act of reproduction as provided in Taiwan Copyright Law by sharing music or text files with other users.  Also, blogger’s posting music files in his/her blog for unspecific users to listen to also constitutes “public transmission” as defined in the Copyright Law. 

  Notwithstanding the sentences to be imposed on these bloggers are lenient and commutable to fine payment, they indeed set chilling precedent to the emerging blog culture.  Some of these convicted bloggers provided 400 to 500 music files on their blogs for users’ listening and downloading, and the others listed links to unauthorized music websites.

  These district court judgments all present one holding that these bloggers’ stand for claiming reasonable use of music files is weak since they are not legally licensed by the copyright holders thereof and thus infringes upon the copyright holders’ rights, even though no commercial activity is involved.  (2006.10)

/CCS