The nation’s largest associations of intellectual property rights owners and advertising agencies yesterday inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the Infringing Website List (IWL) in a bid to protect the intellectual property rights of the nation’s content providers.
The list is a measure adopted by the US, the UK and Hong Kong to block the advertising revenues of piracy sites based on a list of illegal Web sites.
“We believe that the IWL can effectively threaten piracy sites, as advertising is the main revenue contributor for them,” Intellectual Property Office Director-General Sherry Hong (洪淑敏), who oversaw the MOU signing ceremony, told a news conference.
The UK’s IWL program in February reduced the number of digital ads on illegal Web sites by 64 percent from a year earlier, Hong said, citing data from the London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit.
The Taiwan Intellectual Property Alliance, which represents industry associations of record companies, animation studios, publishers, film studios and software developers, would update the IWL and notify the Taipei Association of Advertising Agencies on a monthly basis, alliance representative Robin Lee (李瑞斌) said.
The association would pass the list on to more than 140 domestic and international advertising agencies, suggesting they do not to place ads on the specified sites, association chairman Evan Teng (鄧博文) said.
Deng said the association received the first list that specified 10 Web sites from the alliance last month and transferred it to its members, which control a combined online and offline advertising budget of nearly NT$12 billion (US$399 million) per year.
Hong said Google, which is not an association member, expressed its support for the program and said that it is willing to receive the list as a reference.
The Internet protocol (IP) addresses of piracy sites are mainly located in China and the US, Hong said, adding that the office has been in contact with Chinese authorities over piracy issues in accordance with the Cross-Strait Agreement on Intellectual Property Right Protection and Cooperation.
The office in February signed an intellectual property enforcement MOU with the US and offered Taiwan’s IWL to the nation last month, and is waiting for US authorities to take action against the illegal Web sites, Hong said.
The most popular piracy site in Taiwan for illegally downloading movies is Eyny.com (伊莉討論區), whose IP address routes to the US, Hong said, citing information from the Motion Picture Association of America.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS