Man sentenced and ruled to pay TWD13 million for intercepting TV Station’s signals

　A man, surnamed Wang, had been working with a criminal gang based in China since 2015 and setting up control rooms in Taiwan in order to intercept about thirteen television stations’ signals, including Formosa TV, and further to transmit the signals, without due authorization, to illegal set-top box providers through the said gang’s cloud server for profiting purpose.  New Taipei District Court sustained the commission of Wang’s offense of violating the Copyright Act and sentenced him to one year in prison and also ruled that Wang shall pay TWD1 million to each of the 13 victim-TV stations, and thus, the total amount of damages payable by Wang is TWD13 million.  This case is appealable.  

　The judgment addresses that in 2015 Wang got acquainted with a Chinese man who introduced himself as HO Kang-Ning from the said gang, and then Wang began to provide the services of setting up control rooms, intercepting signals, transcoding, and transmitting the signals to the said gang’s cloud server and also to the relevant illegal set-top box providers for set-top boxes consumers’ viewing.  Wang had received monthly remuneration from TWD30,000 to TWD70,000 from the said gang for providing the aforesaid services.  

　Formosa TV and other victim-TV stations reported this matter to the police in 2017 after finding that Unblock Tech’s set-top box product (product name: U-Box 3 S900 ProBT; 安博盒子第3代藍芽智慧電視盒), which claimed to be able to receive the thirteen TV stations’ channels without due authorization, was commercially available on market. Hence, the police initiated a raid action in 2018 and seized computer mainframes, decoders, routers, signal amplifiers, set-top boxes.  

  With Wang frankly admitting the offense charged against him and in view of the fact that this case involves millions of incomes received in the crime, the said gang’s immense proceeds of crime, and also the large number of infringed works, the court ruled that Wang should receive a sentence of one year in prison and pay TWD1 million to each victim-TV station for maliciously intercepting signals without due authorization for profit gaining purpose.  (Released 2020.07.10)  

/CCS