萬國法律事務所

A college student in Taipei was sued by movie distributors, AV-Jet International Media Co., and Deep Joy Moive for his adding the hyperlinks of “Faithball” and “Hear Me” into playlists of YouTube.

The two movie distributors made complaints to ShiLin District Attorneys that the college student’s action infringed their clients’ copyright and violated copyright law. The student, though believed his action were only for his future own enjoyment of the movies, still paid NT$20,000 to settle the case out of fear that the lawsuit and court proceedings will bring trouble to his schoolwork. “They told me they won’t drop the case empty handed given they have filed the lawsuits.” The student told the media.

Taipei District Attorneys clarifies to the public that such cases actually do not constitute a criminal offense of the copyright law. Unless a user publicly disseminate the movies, he or she would not violate the copyright law merely due the fact of adding the movies into his or her YouTube playlist. The Ministry of Economic Affairs also expressed that uploading movies is illegal, yet adding them to playlist fall short of copyright infringement.

Official indicated to the media that District Attorneys all over Taiwan have received more than a hundred complaints of similar cases. District Attorneys will carefully look into the cases to see if the companies’ lawsuits against college student pose as illegal action themselves.