There have been quite a few cases of restaurants being accused of copyright infringement for their use of unauthorized recorded music in public spaces. Yet here in Taiwan, tracing the copyright ownership of musical works can be tricky. Now thanks to the efforts of the island's largest telecom company, the procedures for gaining legal permission from the music industry will be greatly simplified.

Have you ever thought that how the music played at your favorite restaurant affect you in any way and what it would be like if there's no music in the restaurant?

Many store owners play music in their stores, but you may be surprised to know that it actually requires a performance license to play the songs, whether it is a CD or radio broadcasting, in public.

Without the performance license from music copyright owners, playing the music in public may be illegal.

However, music copyright certification in Taiwan is complicated and is without an establishment who can fully represent the copyright owners.

For store owners who want to play music in their store, they could still violate the copyright law even if they have obtained the license authorized by one organization.

In order to solve the problem, Chunghwa Telecom, in collaboration with local digital music service provider, established a legal music database through obtaining over 90% of music copyrights from various local music licensing organizations.

With the music playing device provided by Chunghwa Telecom, store owners can play over 50,000 songs with access to over 206 music channels.

Since piracy has greatly undermined the sales and revenues of records, the service will also help secure the rights of the song writers and the record companies, as well as bringing them income from legal music licensing.

The service allows stores which are smaller than 100 ping to play music within the store, and charges 1,200 NT dollars per month.

Chunghwa Telecom says that they are confident that they will snatch over 50% of the market share of legal public performing service.

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