p2pnet - rss feed: Taipei p2p owner charged:
Kuro.com.tw, "Taipei’s most popular p2p site," says the Taipei Times here, has, "tried to play down" a criminal indictment launched against it by the Taipei District Public Prosecutors’ Office, citing failed attempts to close similar sites in the US.
"Peer-to-peer sites have been prosecuted before and have been found not guilty," Bill Heaney quotes Kuro.com.tw spokesman Philip Wang as saying.
"Given this trend, even the US federal court is taking the position that the technology itself is no different from a Xerox machine. It is the user’s behavior that infringes copyright."
Last Thursday the Taipei prosecutor filed charges against Kuro’s management team and one subscriber under the amended Copyright Law, says the report, going on that the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) "was celebrating the move yesterday, and quoting IFPI Taiwan branch secretary-general Robin Lee as saying, "Our position is that this is great."
"This proves that peer-to-peer is illegal and infringes copyright. It also shows that Taiwan’s copyright laws conform to global standards. It also means that Kuro and Ezpeer should close down their businesses."
Taiwan has filed charges against five individuals, "the most recent one on Thursday with Kuro against Chen Jia-hui, who allegedly had stored 970 illegally copied song titles on her computer’s hard disk".
"We want to take this chance to give peer-to-peer users a warning that they need to reconsider what they’re doing and give up their membership of peer-to-peer sites," Lee said.
However, John Eastwood, co-chair of the European Chamber of Commerce Taipei, apparently expressed concerns that there might be better ways: "If you look at these cases, there’s a lot more sensationalism to them than actual results."
