我國著作權法刑事案件中影響量刑因素之研究

Abstract

我國長期蒙受「盜版王國」之污名，在各界批評、討論的聲浪中，違反著作權法刑事案件之量刑過輕、標準不一等問題，一直是被檢討的重要指標。但法院之量刑標準究竟如何，其真貌始終難為外界所知，本論文之研究即擬以違反著作權法之刑事案件為對象，探討實質上影響其量刑之因素為何，並藉以檢視我國違反著作權法之刑事案件，是否確有外界詬病之量刑過輕、標準不一之狀況，期能提出建立相關刑度標準之建議。 本論文之內容除介紹有關量刑基準之理論基礎，包括刑罰理論、量刑理論，並分析我國刑法中有關量刑基準之規定，並就我國著作權法刑罰規定之沿革為說明，包括著作權法本身之沿革、與本研究有關之著作權法刑罰規定歷次修正比較外，另在國外立法例部分，則簡介美國「聯邦量刑準據」之內容，並兼及其他各國量刑基準規定概況及我國司法院頒之「智慧財產案件量刑參考要點」，藉以呈現不同之量刑規範。研究之核心則為利用司法院之裁判書查詢系統為工具，就我國違反著作權法刑事案件依刑度輕重設定不同檢索條件，採分層隨機抽樣方式，進行分析。分析後所得資料，則嚐試以統計學方法篩選出具有實質影響力之量刑因素，做為與美國「聯邦量刑準據」及我國司法院頒「智慧財產案件量刑參考要點」比較之基礎。 研究結論為，我國著作權法刑事案件中，對於量刑產生實質影響之因素，最主要且共通者仍為前科紀錄、侵害程度及犯罪手段，而在不同之案件中，犯罪之目的、共犯之情形，也具有顯著之影響力，但未能歸納出具體之量刑標準，故所謂量刑標準不一，確非虛指；另與美國「聯邦量刑準據」之規定適用結果相較，對違反著作權法之案件，就同樣情節之犯行，我國法院所為量刑，相對於美國，確實較輕。再以分析結果與司法院頒「智慧財產案件量刑參考要點」比較，認為該要點所訂各項量刑參考指標繁瑣，且與實證分析判決後所得結果有落差，建議應適度簡化，並應於對既往案例進行有計劃之分析後再訂定更具體之參考指標，始能發揮實際效用。

Taiwan has been plagued by the notorious title as a “Pirate Kingdom” for a very long time. In many of the critiques and discussions regarding the legal action against piracy, one of the important issues is that verdictes in criminal cases in violation of the Copyright Act are often too light or without a unanimous standard. The criterion for imposing penalty by the court remains a mystery. Hence this thesis aims to study Taiwan’s criminal cases in violation of the Copyright Act in order to uncover some of the factors that may affect the sentencing, to inspect whether the verdicts tend to be too light or without any unanimous standard, and to suggest setting up possible sentencing guidelines. This thesis first introduces basic theoretical foundation of sentencing, containing penalty theories, theories in regard to imposing penalty, and analysis about the regulations in related to sentencing in Taiwan’s Criminal Code. Next, the course of changes and development of Taiwan’s Copyright Act will be illustrated, including the past history of the Act and the various revisions of the Copyright Act related to this research. As to foreign legislative examples, a brief introduction about “Federal Sentencing Guidelines” of U.S.A. will be made. In addition, various sentencing norms and overview of other countries sentencing datum regulations and “Consultation directions for the sentencing of intellectual property cases” issued by Taiwan’s Judicial Yuan (the “Consultation directions”) will also be introduced. The core of this research is to investigate criminal case verdicts related to the Copyright Act by setting various clauses and choose samples with Stratified random sampling pattern. The incoming materials are checked by use of the statistics method to screen the potential factors that may affect the sentencing to set up the foundation of comparison with ‘Federal Sentencing Guidelines’ of U.S.A. and the “Consultation directions.” The conclusion is that the most important and applicable factors affecting the verdicts of criminal cases in violation of the Copyright Act in Taiwan include the previous conviction, the degree of encroachment and means of offense; in different cases, the purpose of the offense, the accomplice's situation are also apparently influential. Since the thesis is unable to sum up the concrete criterion for sentencing, the so-called “sentencing without a unanimous standard” is probably true. Besides, compared with ‘Federal Sentencing Guidelines’ of U.S.A., the general verdicts of criminal cases in violation of our Copyright Act seem to be on the light side. When comparing with the “Consultation directions,” it shows that the sentencing criteria are overly complicated and are not exactly based upon the result of practical case analysis. Hence the final suggestion is that sentence guidelines should be carefully simplified, and more concrete criteria should be set up after conducting in-depth researches of previous cases.