COPYRIGHT VIOLATION: Lin Jung-peng had also been sentenced earlier to two years in prison for selling 148 types of software that he downloaded from a Chinese Web site.

The Taoyuan District Court yesterday ordered an online dealer of pirated software to pay damages totaling NT$740 million (US$22.52 million) to 10 software companies.

The court estimated that from July 2002 to January 2005, Lin Jung-peng(林榮鵬) earned NT$3 million by selling 148 different types of professional graphics software that he downloaded from a Chinese Web site before being caught by police. The court ordered Lin to pay NT$5 million for each type of software pirated in violation of the Copyright Law
(著作權法).

The court had already ruled last month that Lin must serve a two-year prison sentence, after which the software companies can apply to the court to force him to make monthly payments out of his salary. Lin must also print apologies to the software companies in newspapers.

Acknowledging that Lin might not be able to pay such an astronomical figure, Judge Chen Ching-yi (陳清怡) said the verdict was more symbolic than practical.

Sung Hung-ti, chair of the Taiwanese branch of the Business Software Alliance, an international organization representing software manufacturers, said that the NT$5 million in civil damages per program that the companies claimed was the maximum.

However, the programs that Lin pirated typically sold for less than that on the legal market. Lin sold the programs -- including Advanced Design System, AutoCad, Cimatron and Windows operating systems -- for between NT$8,000 and NT$10,000.

The 10 companies included nine US companies and one Israeli company.

The court awarded US software manufacturer Autodesk the highest amount of compensation at NT$190 million after 38 of its programs were pirated. Parametric Technology Company was second with NT$145 million, and Bentley Systems was third with NT$135 million.

Chen said that buyers of the pirated programs could pass them on to other users, making it impossible to calculate exactly how many other people received pirated copies, as well as contributing to the severity of Lin's infringement of intellectual property rights.

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Add YouTube to the new Apple iPhone’s list of promised goodies.
California-based Apple said yesterday iPhone buyers will be able to stream videos from Google’s YouTube wirelessly.
It’s yet another feature being tacked on as Apple prepares to launch one of the most-talked-about devices in years.
At first, about 10,000 YouTube videos will be available in the high-quality format used by the iPhone. The rest will be available by fall.
The anticipation has been building for months around the launch of the iPhone on June 29.
And, in the end, all that hype might come back to bite Apple as the hoopla leads to unreasonable expectations, said Christopher Hazelton, senior analyst at Framingham-based research firm IDC.

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s such a big phenomenon, it’s such a household name, it’s almost out of control,” he said.
The question remains whether Apple can turn that buzz into big sales - the kind its music player the iPod has been able to rake in.
The iPhone will carry a high price tag, running between $500 and $600.
But Apple is hoping to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. “That would be quite unprecedented,” said John Jackson, an analyst with Boston-based the Yankee Group.
And the iPhone faces some major hurdles. Its high cost coupled with the price of dropping another cell phone plan to sign up for the iPhone, which can average around $175, might keep many consumers away, analysts said.
Consumers need to take a step back and consider other options that might better suit them, said Bill Nebes, chief executive of IMO Independent Mobile. “It’s sort of like cars you get excited about. You want to buy it, but you don’t think about how it’s going to drive in the snow,” he said. Nebes said other, cheaper alternatives might work better for certain features. The Ocean from Helio, for instance, is good for instant messaging and the Sprint Upstage M620 has a music player while costing less than the iPhone.
But already the iPhone is causing a stir in the mobile industry as more cell phone makers are adopting similar touch screens, Hazelton said. Also, unlike other manufacturers who depend on cell-phone carriers to market and distribute their products, Apple has largely taken control of its launch in spite of its five-year deal with AT&T, Jackson said. Other manufacturers might take a closer look at that business model, he added.

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