Also as to keep up with the development of its hi-tech industries, Taiwan has continually upgraded its IP system to bring it in the line of international standards. Software Related Piracy Worldwide Ethical Issues Society becomes more dependent on computers and computer networks. We also become more and more vulnerable to computer misuse - that is, to misuse of computers and computer networks by human beings. It has created a wide range of social problems. Among them, software piracy is one of the most immediate problems need to be solved around the whole world. Large-scale piracy became common after the arrival of the personal computer and packaged software in the late 1970s. This development put hardware and software into hands of individuals at reasonable cost and enable them to perform several different tasks at the same time because a number of programs are integrated together on a single storage disk. Unfortunately, because the original versions of these software packages are very expensive, the temptation to pirate a copy has proved too much for million of users and would-be users. Many people claim that Asia is the king of coping. Software piracy is part of the way of life. Most estimates suggest that about 90% of all software in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and India has been copied. It is common practice Asia to purchase a computer complete with a variety of bootlegged programs already installed on the hard disk. Asian companies routinely buy one or two legitimate copies of a piece of software and duplicate hundreds of copies for their employees. Pirated
software, music, and videos sell in the street markets for a fraction of the normal retail price. Most people in Asia see coping software as a legitimate way to cut costs and expenses. In China, copying of all Western software products has been condoned for years by their government. In recent case, thousands of fake holograms on counterfeit Microsoft software being sold from Taiwan was traced to a Chinese government-owned factory in the special Shenzen economic zone near Hong Kong. In 1991, China announced that it would join the Berne Convention, the international pact governing copyright protection, and in 1992 China agreed to U.S. demands that it outlaws the theft of software when it amended its copyright law. As a result, Microsoft entered the Chinese for the first time. However, doubts remained about what precisely both moves would mean in real terms. If mainland China is tops for the quantity of software copied, Taiwan is probably tops for quality. Long known as the counterfeiting capital of the world, Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, is home to master forgers who apparently are able to produce flawless copies of Western computer diskettes, packaging, movies, video games and even licensing agreements that have fooled all but expert computer company investigators. In Hong Kong, about seven or eight copies of well known packages are thought to exist for every legitimate copy sold, while the counterfeiting of goods of all kinds is estimated to be worth $1 billion a year to the Singapore economy alone. Meanwhile, in Thailand, where 97% of software has been copied, a recent Association of Thai Computer Industry survey put personal hardware sales at over three times of software sales. Although anti-piracy laws do exist in these countries, they are rarely successfully enforced and fines are usually minimal. Beside Asia, software related piracy problems are also serious in Middle Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Lotus claims to lose as much as $25 million annually in foregone revenue as a result of
copying in the Middle East alone. In Latin America, pirate software programs are openly on sale in markets from Peru to. Anti-piracy laws are almost nonsexist, the local government seems unlikely to take legal actions to curb counterfeiting when know that the results are so rewarding. In the past, software was illegal in communist Eastern Europe because of the Western bans, but in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, IBM offered an amnesty to software pirates in the form of a modest fee to legalize all their pirate programs and an exchange service that enabled users to trade in their pirate program for legitimate purchased at a discount. Over the years, giant software companies have keep close eyes on the worldwide piracy issues, however they could do to prevent those piracy acts are too limited- and too costly. As a result, the U.S.-based Software Publishers’ Association (SPA) estimates that software piracy is costing U.S. software producers between $10 billion and $12 billion a year worldwide - part of an estimate $60 to $80 billion a year lost to U.S. companies through the theft of intellectual property of types. The idea of IPR has been around since the Middle Ages, and the current forms of legal protection have evolved over centuries. According to the Untied Nations’ Patent Office, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), intellectual property is defined as the rights to the results of intellectual activity in the industry, scientific, literary, or artistic. Generally speaking, copyright law has traditionally protected forms of literary expression. However, computer software is a new king of entity that presents major challenges for the law. Chief among these are how we define ownership of this form of
intellectual property and how the rights of ownership can and should be protected. Current laws are outdated and confusing, especially those of Asian countries. In the past, IPR was considered a mere trifle in Taiwan, but now it has become a major issue as a result of increased concern for international IPR. The Taiwan Administration, Legislative, and the local industries held a number of strong debates on this subject. These debates also attracted the public’s attention. In this connection, both government and the public have started to realize the importance of IPR protection in Taiwan. Their attitudes towards this have changed from apathetic and passive to concerned and active. Today, Taiwan starts to provide a better and more effective environment for copyright protection. Now that Taiwan is off the U.S. 301 Watch List and has made the amendments to its laws required for entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), Taiwan is more ready to face obstacles in preventing the piracy and understand that it is the obligation of every member of the international community to confront the problems. Laws in Taiwan Taiwan began to seek admission to the GATT in 1990. The GATT regarded Taiwan as a developed economic body because its economic strength at its application. In this connection, they set the same deadline for Taiwan to adjust its intellectual property system as that of other GATT or WTO developed countries. In this regards, Taiwan government promptly adjusted the
legislation and revised its copyright laws in accordance with the international trend. In order to meet the international standard, Taiwan Legislation has comprehensively revised the Copyright Law in 1992 as follows: 1. Has clear and concise. 2. Complies with international conventions and treaties. The Copyright Law protects works of both Taiwan and foreign origin on the basis of reciprocity. 3. Expressly provides both moral rights and economic rights. Moral right include the rights of public release, attribution, and integrity. 4. Meets international standards for the term of protection. The Law extends the term of copyright to life of the author plus 50 years, or 50 years after the date of the first publication of a work. 5. Seeks to harmonize social and public interests with the rights of authors and copyright owners through an expanded chapter on fair use. In terms of enforcement, various government departments have adopted number of measures to assist the copyright holders in enforcing their rights in infringement cases. For examples: To prevent the unauthorized import of copyright goods, the Directorate General of Customs has established a set of guidelines pursuant to the Copyright Law. Authorized importers are listed in the customs database, and good imported by these companies will be allowed to clear. Where the importer is not listed as authorized, the local representative of the copyright owner will be notified, and if the goods are not licensed,
the importer will be required to return the goods to the exporting country. Also, in order to prevent the export of infringing computer software products, the government has implemented an export administration system since the end of 1992. Under the system, registration, verification, and examinations on 14 categories of products that contain computer programs are required. The products inspected included computers, printers, and video game machines. While multimedia technology improves daily, its intellectual property problems proportionally increase. Due to the complexity and potential impact of multimedia issues, the Industrial Technology Department of Ministry of Economic Affairs retained the Institute for Information Industry (III) to study and develop solutions to assist industry in overcoming difficulties encountered in product development. The Multimedia Research Project conducted under the III has been conducting a study of the legal protection of multimedia in two different phases: 1. First Phase - Identifying problems and the Publication of the Guidelines for the Legal Protection of Multimedia. The multimedia companies are being visited in order to find out the most common problems firms are facing in their development of multimedia programs. The result of the first phase of research were complied and published as Guidelines for the Legal Protection of Multimedia. The book is in a question-answer format and provides information on about 90% of the most commonly faced problems by Taiwanese multimedia firms. In addition, the topics are arranged in a flowchart through the development of multimedia products: the planning stage, the drafting of the script, the collection of materials, manufacture, and the sales. 2. Second Phase - Proposal for Revisions to Multimedia Copyright Legislation. The III issued a list of recommendations to revise the Copyright Law to protect multimedia. The recommendations include copyright problems stemming from digital technology.
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