It is found that Appellee did use the photographic work at dispute of Appellant on Appellee’s Yahoo! blog on Oct. 19, 2008. And, the use of Appellee was to place the picture in the article “One egg destroys one forest” in the category “eco-notebook.” From the contexts prior to or after the cited picture, the purpose was, though, to disseminate the thought of objecting to the establishment of a dome stadium at the current location of the Song-shan cigarette factory. The main content of the article is, “The Song-shan cigarette factory has a lot of different trees and a complete wetland environment, and it is an ecologically pleasant place in a busy area of Taipei City. Back then, only because of commercial considerations of traffic convenience, it was decided that the dome was hatched in the Song-shan cigarette factory, thereby a scene of both historic and natural meanings will disappear in the map of Taipei City forever…. Officials and business persons extremely happily entered into a contract, and spoke aloud about how many business opportunities that the dome could bring, but no one heard the crying of Common Moorhen and other animals in the water pool of the cigarette factory ….” And, the photographic work at disputed was used once at the end, which was not denied by Appellee so as to be true. … The original court, though, recognized Appellee as a news reporter not defined in a traditional meaning. However, because of the development of technology, acquiring information related to national politics, social events, and others is not limited to so-called news reporters. And, as for so-called news reporters, because of the development of technology, everyone could be a news reporter. However, merely because Appellee cares about social, public interests so that what he did is called a news report, he is then considered as a professionally-trained news reporter. Then, anyone who publishes a comment on news, where, consequently, such the comment can be recognized as a commentary news report, can use others’ photographic works without any constraint. That is obviously not to protect copyright owners of photographic works. Besides, although having a written article accompanied with pictures and photos can get readers more interested, it is not necessary. So, Appellee’s act of using the photographic work at dispute hardly meets the interest balance between protecting rights of copyright owners and looking for social, public interests of improvement of information transmission, where the interest balance is what the legislation intended when Articles 49 and 52 of the Copyright Act was passed. Therefore, the act that Appellee recited without any constraint the photographic work at dispute which has been published by Appellant is hardly considered as use of the photographic work at dispute which is an act of legally using others’ works and is allowed by the legislation for compromising with social, public interests.

Photographic work, news reporter