我國著作權侵害刑事處罰之研究

A Study on Penalty Articles of copyright infringement in ROC

本文探討我國著作權法中關於著作權侵害之刑事處罰，主要就著作權法第七章所規定之九種刑事處罰類型介紹其犯罪構成要件及罰則，其次亦簡略介紹於民國九十六年為配合刑法之修正而刪除之常業罪之立法過程。此外，近年我國在美國特別三○一條款影響下，為符合美國期待，遂規範只要重製光碟，與販售或出租者均為非告訴乃論罪，且刑度提高至本刑五年，更在民國九十六年針對網路業者訂定刑事處罰。只是，著作權侵害刑罰化是否果能對著作權之保護產生正面的效用，尤其像我國著作權法中如此嚴峻之刑事處罰規範於實務上是否能真正徹底實施，並且達成其立法目的，恐怕仍有待對實務上實際適用的情況統計及分析，才能進一步加以驗證。

This article explores the criminal penalties against copyright infringements prescribed in the Copyright Act in Taiwan. It begins with an introduction on the nine criminal offences stated in the Chapter 7 of the Act regarding the constitutive elements and corresponding punishments, as well as on the deletion of the repeated offence that took place in 2007 in an attempt to accommodate the modification of the Criminal Code. Besides, under the constant pressure from the Special 301 list of US, Taiwan started to criminalize the reproduction, selling and renting behaviors of CDs. All above were changed from indictable crimes only upon complaints to indictable ones without complaints, and the level of penalties raised up to 5 years. Furthermore, in the same year, criminal punishments were introduced to deal with the internet service providers. Nevertheless, whether the expanding criminalization process against copyright infringements will bring positive effects towards copyright protection and achieve its proclaimed purpose, has remained a question. It requires practical statistics and empirical analysis to prove the link between them.