TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Taiwan Court Convicts Music Sharing Service Kuro

Taiwan Court Convicts Music Sharing Service Kuro

Jeffrey Goldfarb (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Fri, 9 Sep 2005 10:05:21 -0500

By Jeffrey Goldfarb

The music industry claimed another victory in its legal war against
file-sharing networks on Friday when a Taiwan court convicted the
service Kuro of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced its
operators to jail terms of up to three years.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said it was
the first criminal conviction of a peer-to-peer file sharing service,
which distributes information between users instead of through a
central server.

Kuro, which charged users to access music files, was fined T$3
million, or about $90,000, IFPI said. Most of the songs available
using Kuro were by local artists, none of whom were paid by the
service, the music industry trade group said.

"This is good news for artists and the music industry, particularly in
Taiwan, which has had a history of piracy problems," said Lauri
Rechardt, IFPI's director of licensing and litigation.

"Kuro has received a criminal conviction, which sends a strong message
that profiteering from infringement will not be tolerated," she added.

Representatives for Kuro could not immediately be reached for comment.

The judgment follows an Australian court ruling last week that popular
Internet file-sharing network Kazaa breached copyright laws. It was
ordered to modify its software to prevent online music piracy.

The U.S. Supreme Court also said in June that services like Grokster
and Morpheus can be held liable if their intent is to promote
copyright infringement of songs or movies. That case was sent back to
a lower court to be re-examined.

IFPI said the two brothers who ran Kuro have each been sentenced to
three years imprisonment and their father, who was president of the
service, was sentenced to two years.

A Kuro user was also convicted of uploading copyrighted material and
sentenced to four months in prison, IFPI said.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

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