Taiwan Copyright Act Amended to Facilitate Accessibility of Published Works by People with Disabilities

The Legislative Yuan completed the 3rd reading of the amendment to Article 53, 65, 80-2, 87, and Article 87-1 of the Copyright Act on January 7, 2014.  As indicated in the Taiwan IPO’s press release, relevant provisions have been revised to be more specific to facilitate the fair use of and access to information by people with disabilities and also to overcome the difficulties in producing and obtaining accessible format copies of published works.  It is a new departure for Taiwan to actualize the goal of assuring equal opportunities to access to published works for all persons without regard to disability.   

The main points of this amendment are summarized as follows.

1. Amendment to Article 53, Article 80-2, and Article 87-1:  

Central or local government agencies, non-profit institutions or organizations, legally accredited schools of all levels may produce accessible format copies of copyrighted works for people with visual and hearing impairments without permission from copyright holders.  In absence of such permission, people with such impairments or their guardians may produce such copies for their own non-profit use and also circumvent or disarm the technical protection measures adopted by copyright holders.  In addition, such copies produced may be circulated among the above-mentioned agencies, organizations, schools, and visually and hearing impaired people, for the purposes of resource sharing and resource waste avoidance.  Moreover, the above-mentioned agencies, organizations and schools may import from abroad the accessible format copies of copyrighted works for the visually and hearing impaired people’s use. 

2. Amendment to Article 65 and Article 87:  

The 2nd paragraph of Article 65 is revised to specifically provide that the exploitation of copyrighted works within “reasonable scope” as indicated in Article 44~Article 63 should be further tested in accordance with the 4 bases set forth in the 2nd paragraph of Article 65, which is not applicable to those provisions among Article 44~Article 63 that provide clear-cut positive scope of fair use and reproduction of copyrighted works.  In addition, the “copies” indicated in the 4th subparagraph of the 1st paragraph of Article 87 is reworded as “legal copies from abroad”.  This revision is to specifically prohibit parallel import of “genuine goods”. 

Taiwan IPO further indicated that they have been conducting review and amendment of the copyright legal regime of Taiwan and also holding consultation meetings to cope with the digital convergence and rapid technical development.  Also, Taiwan IPO is going to hold public hearings in 2014 to seek opinions from the public so as to formulate a more sophisticated copyright legal regime to fulfill comprehensive copyright protection.  (January 2014)
/CCS