Well, if you happen to believe that the three-strike method of dealing with internet piracy is the future, we might all be following Taiwan when it comes to developing our copyright laws.
Taiwan has just passed a revision to its copyright rules that introduces a form of the much talked about three-strike system, whereby web users who continue to access unlicensed sources of content after receiving two warnings that doing so is illegal could lose their internet connections. As much previously reported, such a system has been proposed by content owners in a number of territories, though the system has only been seriously considered in New Zealand and France.
In the former it is actually already law, but politicians, content owners and ISPs are still trying to figure out how to make it work. In France the proposals are still working their way through the French parliament after a temporary set back when the government, who support the proposals, failed to get enough of their supporters in the French Assembly along to the big vote just before Easter.
The Taiwanese government has introduced the system in order to achieve its twin aims of cracking down on internet piracy without flooding the courts with lawsuits from content owners against the providers of file-sharing services or individual file-sharers. From what I can gather the Taiwanese three-strike system is slightly less draconian than that proposed in France and New Zealand, in particular because it proposes offenders have their internet access "restricted" rather than automatically cut off. That could mean temporary suspensions.
Media coverage of the new rules also says that Taiwanese ISPs "can" restrict the services of copyright infringers - but I'm not sure whether than means the net firms have to when asked to act by a content owner, or whether it's up to them. As much previously reported, ISPs generally don't like getting involved in piracy policing and, given a choice, would rather not cut off any paying customers, even if they are accessing all sorts of infringing content.
Then again, Taiwanese authorities have given the ISPs something in this legal rewrite - a 'safe harbour' provision similar to that in US copyright law which explicitly exempts them from liability for any copyright infringement committed by their customers via their servers. ISPs like explicit exemptions from liability, so may be up for playing their part in the three-strike system to keep this provision.
The whole thing has, as in New Zealand and France, not been without controversy. Those who oppose the new laws say that people who unknowingly download unlicensed content may lose their net access as a result of the three-strike rules. But Margaret Chen, Deputy Director General of Taiwan's Intellectual Property Office, told reporters: "That's not really the point. These people are doing something they shouldn't be doing in the first place. Besides, there are lots of ways to restrict Internet access besides cutting it off entirely".