Net service providers now can 'strike out' pirating surfers

The new rules will exempt the ISPs from any responsibility for offenses caused by pirating parties in order to avoid litigation by copyright owners.

But the service providers will be obliged to inform the pirating parties about the infringement on the copyrights.

They can suspend part or all services to the pirates after giving three warnings.

The pirates will still face lawsuits from the copyright owners.

Officials at the Intellectual Property Office said piracy is comparatively easier because the new technology makes it convenient for people to duplicate and forward information, pictures, images or audio files via the Internet.

They said the new rules will discourage the reckless "posting" or forwarding materials with copyrights.

But the rules should not affect the interests of the majority of Internet users who have no intention of infringing on others' copyrights, they said.

When passing the new rules, the lawmakers also adopted a resolution requiring the Intellectual Property Office to launch an anti-piracy publicity campaign against copyright infringement.

Jobless benefits

In a separate move, the legislators gave final approval to the revision of the Employment Service Law to extend unemployment benefits to those who have lost jobs for longer than one year and unemployed fathers of single-parent families who are the sole breadwinner for their household.

The existing rules already give the benefits to unemployed mothers of single-parent families.

The benefits include cost-free vocational training, drawing a payment of 60 percent of a jobless person's insured monthly wage for up to six months as allowance during the training period.

Qualified people will get a NT$500-per-trip transport allowance for job-searching trips. The funded-trips will be limited to four times a year.

They are also entitled to a NT$100-per-hour allowance for temporary jobs with a limit of 176 hours each month, compared with the current monthly minimum wage of NT$17,280.

After landing jobs, their employers can apply for a subsidy of NT$10,000 per month for a duration of one year.

The Council of Labor Affairs estimated that more than 6,000 people will be qualified for the benefits.

Help for debtors

To provide more practical assistance to debtors, the legislators also passed a revision of the Statute for Consumer Debt Clearance promulgated in last July.

Considering that the individual debtors are often no match for the platoons of finance experts and lawyers at financial institutions, the new rules will enable the debtors to seek help from their local governments -- the municipal or county administrations.

Lawmakers noted that individual consumers with debt obligations are often left in a position of disadvantage because they are easily coaxed into using credit cards promoted by banks due to their lack of knowledge about financial matters.

It would be like mission impossible for them to get a fair deal for settlement through new negotiations.

But help from the local administrations will at least give the individual consumers an equal footing with the giant financial groups when negotiating on terms for repayment, they said.

Pharmaceutical rules

New medical treatment regulations ratified by the lawmakers require the attachment of additional information to the containers or packages of pharmaceutical products to improve safety for patients.

Aside from the requirements under the existing rules, the new information should cover warnings or side effects of the drugs as well as the names of the drug dispenser and the date of the pharmaceuticals given to the patients.

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