The Intellectual Property and Commercial Court ruled on August 15, 2024 that a music streaming service is not liable for intentionally infringing the plaintiff's copyright by playing her songs based on a license granted by the copyright collective management organization (CMO) and relevant record companies, without knowing that the plaintiff had withdrawn from the CMO (112-Min-Chu-Shang-24 Civil Judgment).

 

The defendant operates a website that provides music streaming service. It obtained a blanket license from the CMO to publicly transmit all musical works managed by the CMO from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2020. Additionally, the defendant signed license agreements with the relevant record companies to reproduce their musical works and provide such musical works for users to preview and download. All music files played on the defendant's website were transmitted to it by the licensors.

 

The plaintiff claimed to be the copyright owner of certain songs played on the defendant's website. On February 4, 2018, she announced on her FB page that she had terminated her agreement with the CMO and had withdrawn from the CMO, effective January 1, 2019. The defendant's repeated and unauthorized reproduction and transmission of her songs constituted an intentional infringement of her copyright to such songs.

 

The court held that a person's intent is a subjective and psychological factor that cannot be directly experienced or perceived by a third party, making it difficult to prove by direct external evidence. Accordingly, the court may determine whether a person has an intent to infringe on another's copyright by relying on the person's external actions and other objective circumstances at the time of those actions, considering various evidence and applying common social norms and human nature, and making a judgment based on rules of experience and logic. For example, if a person has made every effort to investigate the relevant facts and has reasonably considered the findings of their investigation, they may be recognized as subjectively lacking the "knowledge" or the intent of infringing on another's copyright. In this case, the music streaming service provided over 70 million songs, all managed by its system. Without any notification from the copyright owner or the CMO, the defendant had no way of knowing whether the license agreement between the copyright owner and the CMO was still in effect. Imposing an obligation on the defendant to continuously verify the license status for more than 70 million songs not only contradicts standard commercial practices, but also imposes a disproportionate responsibility on the defendant. Considering that the defendant did not receive any requests from the CMO or the copyright company to remove specific content, and upon learning that the plaintiff had not authorized the CMO, the defendant immediately ceased playing the plaintiff's songs, the court confirmed that the defendant lacked any intent to infringe on the plaintiff's copyright to her songs.