Newsletter
COPYRIGHT AND ONLINE MUSIC LINKS
If an online music player is placed on an indi-vidual website, and links are provided to the web addresses of music websites, thus enabling un-specified persons to listen to streamed music online, does the act of providing such a player and links violate Taiwan's Copyright Act?
In a recent interpretation, the Intellectual Prop-erty Office noted that the dissemination of music online involves the public transmission of mu-sical works. The Copyright Act defines "public transmission" as communicating or making available the content of a work to the public in the form of sound or images via cable or wireless transmission networks or by other means of communication, including enabling members of the public to receive the content of a work by any of the above means at a time or place of their own choosing. Furthermore, for a work to be "made available to the public" it is not necessary that users in fact engage in acts of transmission or reception; it is only necessary that the work is in a state of being able to be transmitted or re-ceived for it to be deemed to have been made available to the public.
Therefore, if an online music player is placed on an individual website and links are provided to music web addresses, such as to enable unspeci-fied persons to listen to streamed music online, if the links provided merely facilitate access to other websites, this does not involve public transmission from the individual's website of another's musical work, and so does not infringe on the right of public transmission enjoyed by the owner of copyright in the musical work.
However, if an individual website operator is clearly aware that a work linked to on another's website infringes copyright, or that a website linked to is involved in copyright infringement, but the website operator nonetheless provides the public with access to such a website by means of a link, he may be held to be an accomplice or accessory to infringement of the right of public transmission.
As for an individual website on which music is made directly available for unspecified persons to listen to online, the action of making musical works available in this way constitutes public transmission of such works, even if the site does not enable users to download music files. Thus making music available in this way still requires the permission of the copyright owner, or it is likely to infringe against copyright.