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Taipei District Court Issues Significant Jail Terms to Four Operators, the Longest Ever for Copyright Offenses
TAIPEI, Feb. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world's leading anti-piracy coalition, applauds the sentencing of the four operators of notorious GimyTV network of sites.
The Taipei District Court sentenced the primary operator, Sean Wu, to 26 months in prison. Kuo Ren-Quan, the sites' programmer, was sentenced to 22 months. The other two operators, Zhuang Shao-Qi and Wu Nian-Wen, were given jail terms of 18 months and 12 months, respectively.
The GimyTV network of sites had been in operation since 2019; at the time of the police enforcement, its nine domains attracted more than 36 million visits per month.
Following complaints by ACE and other rights holders, the Taiwanese police carried out a successful raid against the defendants in October 2020. Prior to the police action, a number of GimyTV domains were also the subject of site blocking orders granted by judicial or administrative authorities in Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, and Singapore.
"I'd like to congratulate Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau and the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office for the successful prosecution of the GimyTV operators," said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the MPA and Head of ACE. "The prosecution and custodial sentencing of the four GimyTV operators follows the successful prosecution last year against the notorious Taiwanese-operated 8maple websites. These cases have considerable deterrence value and demonstrate how seriously the Taiwan prosecutor's office and courts take large-scale copyright crimes, as well as ACE's continued commitment to tackling piracy in Taiwan."
About The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is the world's leading coalition dedicated to protecting the legal creative market and reducing digital piracy. Driven by a comprehensive approach to addressing piracy through criminal referrals, civil litigation, and cease-and-desist operations, ACE has achieved many successful global enforcement actions against illegal streaming services and unauthorized content sources and their operators. Drawing upon the collective expertise and resources of more than 50 media and entertainment companies around the world—including sports channels and associations—and reinforced by the Motion Picture Association's content protection operations, ACE protects the creativity and innovation that drives the global growth of core copyright and entertainment industries. The current governing board members for ACE are Amazon, Apple TV+, NBCUniversal, Netflix Studios LLC, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Warner Bros. Charles Rivkin is Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association and Chairman of ACE. For more information, visit www.alliance4creativity.com.
