萬國法律事務所

The Executive Yuan has recently approved the amendments to the Copyrights Intermediary Organizations Act to create a unitary window for the collection of copyrights royalties in order to solve the issues arising from the differences in the fees charged by various intermediary groups.

In other words, with the new amendments, places such as KTVs, hotels, beauty shops, hospitals, etc. will be required to pay royalties for playing the copyrighted songs or programs to a unitary window and the intermediaries would be required to synchronize the methods in charging the royalties.

Under the current system, an intermediary group can charge the user a fix amount based on the percentage of incomes, the size of the venue, the amount of usage or even authorize all the contents to user for unlimited use for a certain period of time. This has, however, caused many disputes due to the different methods of charges adopted by the intermediary groups.

With the new amendments, the authorities anticipate that the disputes can now be effectively dealt with. With the new amendments, the authorities will nevertheless play an important role in working out the details on the methods in charging the royalties for playing copyrighted songs and programs by the users.