Newsletter
COPYRIGHT STATUS OF IN-STORE MUSIC
With copyright issues increasingly receiving public attention, members of the public are often confused, when using music, as to whether their modes of use may break the law. In particular, many store proprietors play musical tapes or CDs, or music broadcast by radio stations, in their business premises, in order to enhance the in-store atmosphere. Is such use of music law-ful?
In a recent interpretation, the Intellectual Prop-erty Office stated that when considering the playing in stores of musical tapes and CDs or of music broadcast by radio stations, one should distinguish the following two forms of activity: if a store proprietor uses ordinary domestic re-ceiving equipment to receive the content of mu-sical works, phonographic works, linguistic works, etc., as broadcast by a radio station, by merely switching on the radio receiver, this is a simple act of receiving a signal, and does not involve the public performance of copyright works. But if a proprietor uses audio equipment to play CDs or audiotapes in the store, such playing is public performance of musical and phonographic works, regardless of whether the music or songs played originate in Taiwan or abroad. Under the Copyright Act, the right of public performance is an exclusive right of the owner of economic rights in a copyright work, and the public performance of a work in which another person holds economic rights requires the prior authorization of the rights owner. Without such authorization, such public per-formance is likely to infringe on the economic rights in the work. Furthermore, the Copyright Act also provides that the owner of economic rights in a phonographic work may demand re-muneration from a person that uses the work.