Newsletter
LIABILITY OF WEBSITE OPERATORS AND MANAGERS
The Taipei District Court recently heard a case concerning a pornographic website. The court held that under Articles 8 and 22 of the Tele-communications Law, a website operator or manager has the right to refuse or cease to transmit content which is obviously detrimental to public order or good morals, or threatens na-tional security or law and order. Therefore a website operator or manager has the right to re-view views expressed by site users, and, under the Telecommunications Law, is entitled to re-fuse to publish, or to delete, any expressive content which offends public decency or good morals. Hence by allowing unspecified mem-bers an access to the website to select and browse pornographic images, the defendant contravened Article 235 of the Criminal Code, which forbids the dissemination of obscene images. The court sentenced him to three months' imprisonment, commutable to a fine, suspended for two years. Although the case may still go to appeal, the judgment suggests that website operators and managers have both the right and the duty to review the content expressed by site users. Hence where material appearing on a website infringes the intellectual property rights of an-other, a website operator or manager might be held to be a joint infringer.