In a speech entitled “To Identify the Rights of Wisdom Property”, Prof. Chuang Chi-ming, Department of Information Engineering, TKU, warned his audience last Monday that while unscrupulously downloading the popular music CDs into MP3s or reproducing the related pictures, it has constituted a flagrant violation of another person’s royalty or copyrights. “There are well-established cases in which the legal authorities have successfully indicted and convicted the law offenders.” He said.

So, Prof. Chuang admonished his audience, among them many young students, to be wary lest they should unwittingly commit the offense.

For illustration, Prof. Chuang gave some ostensible examples. Once a person has completed a creative work, he said, he/she has also acquired royalty, the copyright, in other words. If a person has scanned the production and transmitted it to his/her personal treasury on the Internet, such as the pictures of Playboy magazine, he/she has committed an act of plagiarism. We may quote another ill-famed case, he said, in which a male-student has published his ex-girlfriend’s personal data including her picture on the Internet, pretending she is an underground prostitute, he has certainly committed a crime, as per Article 211 of the Legal Civic Code. He has committed a forgery crime. By the same token, Prof. Chuang continued his advice, suppose a person has pressed the CD into an MP3, or transferred the information pertaining to sale of firearms or ammunition into his own personal networks, it is also a criminal offense. If the owner of such product should press charges, he/she together with the administrators of the networks will be subject to law indictment. So, the long and the short is, be careful.

But for purposes of teaching, library research or commentary quoted on news events, the similar act will be exempt from indictments from the law authorities, he thus concluded his speech with a hopeful note.

UPDATE： 2010/09/27 CLICKS： 1335 DOWNLOADS：