Ezpeer, the nation's second largest peer-to-peer (P2P) operator, announced yesterday that it had reached agreement with major record labels to distribute authorized music, making it the first legal P2P file-sharing operator in the greater China region.
The reconciliation between Ezpeer and copyright holders came as a surprise. The Shilin District Court ruled in June last year that Ezpeer was not guilty of infringing on intellectual property rights (IPR) by providing a for-fee platform for subscribers to swap files.
"When the verdict was announced a year ago, I called it the darkest day for the music industry," said Robin Lee (李瑞斌), secretary-general of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in Taiwan, which filed the lawsuit against Ezpeer.
"But now, I say today signals the dawn of new hope for the industry," Lee said at a press conference yesterday.
Ezpeer's larger rival Kuro, operated by Fashionow Taiwan Inc (
Kuro's top management, including its chairman, chief executive and president, were found guilty of violating IPR by the Taipei District Court in September last year. The trio were sentenced to two to three years in prison and fined NT$3 million (US$91,968) each.
One public relations official at Kuro told the Taipei Times that the firm was delighted to see Ezpeer's new business model, and "hopes to work toward that direction."
Both Lee and Kuro refused to comment on whether the two parties are in talks on a settlement.
Talking about the long-awaited cooperation, Lee said that P2P operators and record companies had differed greatly in defining P2P technology at the start, as P2P operators considered it a neutral tool while record firms deemed the tool a facility to infringe IPR.
However, as P2P operators encountered repeated setbacks internationally over the years, they gradually turned to partnerships with copyright holders.
This helped local operators realize that this was the right way to make their business sustainable, Lee said.
The new Ezpeer -- "Ezpeer+" -- will be opened for testing today and may be launched next month, said Alin Wu (
As KKBOX and Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩) have entered the legal online music market earlier and saw substantial business, Ezpeer+ hopes to expand on its current subscriber base of 300,000, Wu said, without giving a specific goal.
Ezpeer+ charges P2P users — including members of Ezpeer or other operators — a monthly fee of NT$99 for unlimited swap. Newcomers will have to pay a monthly fee of NT$149 to exchange music files and play on the computer. The company is also working in cooperation with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), whose Hinet users can log on to the Ezpeer site with their Hinet accounts.
Users who wish to download the files into their digital music players will need to pay NT$249 per month. The downloaded files are in WMA format only, Wu said.
To ensure the quality of the files, record companies will provide Ezpeer+ with their music files, which will be labeled as “golden files” for swapping, Wu said.
When the service is officially launched, there will be 500,000 golden files ready for exchange, he said.
Second-hand files that are circulating among users will be marked “player files,” Wu said.
Profits given to copyright holders — record labels, composers and the Music Copyright Intermediary Society of Chinese Taipei (中華音樂著作權仲介協會) — will be calculated by the number of times a song is played online, Wu said.
He refused to disclose the split percentage, citing confidentiality agreement.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary