From: bjones@convex.com (Brad Jones)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.taiwan
Subject: Re: Any effort for TV & radio deregulation??
Date: 5 Oct 92 15:53:02 GMT
Article-I.D.: dhostwo.bjones.718300382
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
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yang-allan@CS.YALE.EDU (J. Allan Yang) writes:

>For those who are familiar with the most recent heartbeats of Taiwan:
>Is there any vigorous effort trying to push for TV and radio deregulation?


On Sunday, 10/4/92, the "Dallas Morning News" ran a story in the Business
Section (written by Joseph Kahn) about the ongoing problem of copyright
infringement in Taiwan.  In a roundabout way, the article connected the
copyright infringement issue with the TV deregulation topic.  It appears
that enforcement of the former may lead to the latter.  Pertinent parts
of the article are repeated below.

Brad
--------------------------

   Chen Cin-ching is Taipei's King of Cable.  He provides 42 cable channels
to 50,000 customers in several Taipei suburbs, offering everything from
first-run Hollywood movies to CNN.  He sends out monthly bills, has a large
service staff, a broadcast center and a corporate headquarters, just like
most American cable companies.

   The only difference is that Taiwan doesn't have cable television, at
least officially.  It never has.  Mr. Chen and an estimated 300 other such
businessmen nationwide set up their own system, piggybacking communication
cable along the telephone lines.  Despite periodic crackdowns, they are
thriving because they rarely pay royalties to the creators of the programs
they broadcast.

   Mr. Chen, now 46, began operating about 20 years ago, beginning what has
come to be known as the "Fourth Channel", the cable alternative to the three
legal channels.  Enforcing martial law at the time, the Kuomintang government
tightly controlled all television broadcasts and did not offer a broad
selection of foreign entertainment.

   "People were so bored and fed up with the government programs.  I knew I
would be doing a great service by starting to deliver cable," Mr. Chen said.
So he smuggled in miles of Japanese communication cable, a banned import.
Late at night, he and his staff would grapple their way up telephone poles
or slip into public utility ducts to wire a neighborhood.

   Like the television itself, his network brought a whole new world into
Taipei living rooms.  Soon, everyone wanted it.  Other operators jumped in
and the illicit cable network spread, amoeba-like, eventually to serve about
a quarter of Taiwan's 20 million people.

   "I might have been the richest man in Taiwan today," Mr. Chen said.  "But
the government gave me a lot of trouble."

   Twice they threw him in jail and several times they ripped out his wires
and confiscated his VCRs and satellite dishes.  When he finished his prison
terms, he simply rebuilt the enterprise.  With demands for foreign entertain-
ment so high, and the overhead costs so low, he found breaking the law hard
to resist.

   By the mid-1980s, the United States had caught on.  In trade talks with
Taiwan, culminating this summer in a priority investigation under the U.S.
Special 301 trade law, the U.S. trade representatives insisted that police
and the courts start enforcing U.S. intellectual property rights more
rigorously.  Unless Taiwan cooperated, the United States said, it would slap
hefty duties on many Taiwanese exports to the U.S. market.

   Hollywood studios dispatched their own representatives to Taiwan to monitor
violations of their copyrights.  The first target was the once ubiquitious
"MTV" parlors, 3,000 in Taipei alone, that showed illegal copies of American
movies.  By early this year, most MTV houses had gone bankrupt, the victims
of surprise police inspections and heavy fines for copyright abuse.

   The next target of Hollywood and the U.S. trade office:  Mr. Chen and the
other cable pirates.  Frank Fan, the Taipei representative of several Holly-
wood studios, calls the cable operators "criminals who pick America's pockets"
and vows to see them wiped out.

   The government has begun to cooperate.  But now, instead of relying on
police power, the authorities hope to control the cable system by legalizing
it.

   In exchange for a franchise license and the right to do business openly,
Mr. Chen would have to pay royalties on all the programming he uses.  He would
also face competition from communications conglomerates, like Asia's Star TV,
which are eager to penetrate the Taiwan market once it's legal.

   Mr. Chen says he's up for the challenge and claims that he sought legal-
ization all along.  After all, he said, he's no novice when it comes to
respecting intellectual property.

   Before he began his cable business, he worked as an inventor himself.  He
counts a new popcorn popper and a new kind of faucet among his creations, and
he received patent protection in the United States.

--------------------------

Near the end of the article, Louis Wang, the chairman of the parliamentary
committee charged with reviewing the country's copyright laws, is quoted:

"We are almost a developed country now.  Developed countries have no interest
whatsoever in allowing this kind of fraud to continue.  We have no major dis-
agreement with our U.S. partners and I believe we are really making progress."

--------------------------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.taiwan