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IS PAID USE OF A COMPUTER RUNNING GAME SOFTWARE RENT OF A COPYRIGHT WORK?
Under the Copyright Law, the right to rent out a work is an independent economic right. Article 60 Paragraph 1 of the law also provides: "the owner of a legal copy of a work, other than a sound recording or computer program, may rent such a copy." The above provision seeks to strike a balance between the economic rights in a work and the rights of ownership in a legal copy. Therefore, except for a copy of a sound recording or computer program, the owner of a legal copy of a work may rent it out without the need for licensing by the owner of the economic rights. However, when a business allows consumers to use computer game software on coin-operated equipment, does this amount to renting a com-puter program within the meaning of the Copy-right Law? The law makes no explicit provision on this point, but in current practice two oppos-ing views are held:
That it is rent out: When a business uploads (copies) computer game software onto the hard disk of a computer, and makes it available for consumers to play in return for payment, the money paid by a consumer is a rental fee for the rent of the computer program. Therefore the insertion of coins into coin-operated computer equipment by a consumer in order to play a computer game is a method of paying rental, and providing such coin-operated equipment for consumers to play computer games is an act of renting out a computer program within the meaning of the Copyright Law. This is the view taken by the Ministry of Justice.
That it is not renting out: With regard to the op-eration of coin-operated audio or video juke-boxes, the Ministry of the Interior (formerly the competent authority for copyright affairs) and law enforcement agencies have always deemed such operation to be public performance of mu-sical works or public presentation of audiovisual works, as the case may be, and never held it to be "renting out." The same action of payment by inserting coins should not be interpreted differ-ently in the case of different works, nor should it be considered to involve two different economic rights. On this basis, providing coin-operated equipment for consumers to play computer games would appear not be renting out a com-puter program within the meaning of the Copy-right Law. This is the view taken by the IPO.