Responsible person of Unblocktech Taiwan sentenced to 4 years in prison for copyright infringement

　The responsible person of Unblocktech Taiwan Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 台灣安博公司; hereinafter “Unblocktech Taiwan”), HUANG Bo-Chuan (hereinafter, “Huang”) worked with a Chinese piracy operator and infringer to take advantage of unaware friends to register for them the member accounts at such OTT service providers as Elta.TV, Videoland, and Gala Television Corporation (“GTV”).  After the registration, Huang stole and reproduced the broadcast signals of the aforesaid channels and then uploaded them to overseas servers and further sold set-top boxes to consumers for free viewing.  Such acts of illegal reproduction and public transmission of copyrighted audiovisual works caused Huang to be indicted for Copyright Act violation.  

　The prosecutorial and police investigation revealed that the aforesaid Chinese piracy operator was actually a crime syndicate in China, led by an individual known as “Mr. Xu”.  During the period of his cooperation with Mr. Xu since 2017, Huang had been, under the name of Unblocktech Taiwan, having the set-top box hardware examined and successively certified by the certification bodies authorized by the National Communications Commission and the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection, and then providing the certification labels and commodity inspection marks to Mr. Xu for him to affix the labels to the Unblock Tech TV boxes and ship them to the agents authorized by Huang for import.  Furthermore, the agents resold these TV boxes to downstream distributors or retailers to gain profits, and Huang received licensing fees.  Huang also used his friends’ names to register multiple OTT accounts in Taiwan, providing these accounts to Mr. Xu for him to steal the viewing signals and transmit the images to the Unblock Tech TV boxes for broadcasting.  By the aforesaid acts, Huang committed economic right infringement.  

　On February 27, 2024, the New Taipei District Court sentenced Huang to 4-year imprisonment for his offense of “infringing on the economic rights of another person by reproducing a copyrighted work, without authorization, with the joint intent to sell the same” as defined by the Copyright Act.  Also, the court confiscated the illegal proceeds in an amount of TWD2 million and fined Unblocktech Taiwan TWD1 million.  As for the incidental civil action, Huang and Unblocktech Taiwan should jointly and severally pay TWD2.5 million as damages to each of 18 TV companies and 53 channels, and therefore, the damages payable totaled TWD132.5 million.  The judgment is appealable.  (Released 2024.02.27)  
/CCS