The importance of the Internet world grows with each passing day and has become an indispensible part of our lives. As a response to this global trend and an effort to encourage development of the internet industry in Taiwan, Jaclyn Tsai, Minister without Portfolio at the Executive Yuan, proposed the "Virtual World Law Adjustment Program". The program hopes to remove regulatory obstacles in the way of virtual world developments in Taiwan, thus promoting the proliferation of virtual world applications. Information related to regulatory planning and development in advanced countries is being collected for this purpose, while plans are underway to host a series of forums, public hearings and cross-ministry negotiations as means for negotiations and discussions.

As the scope of development in the virtual world is far-reaching, we will focus on three main aspects initially: "digital commerce", "digital lifestyle", and "digital infringement prevention/civil participation". This will allow us to take inventory of the current regulatory practices pertaining to virtual world developments, decide upon regulatory issues which urgently require law adjustment or cross-ministry negotiations. Issues will be processed in sequence, according to individual urgency. Ten major issues were selected initially as a means to take inventory of corresponding regulatory practices and adjustment efforts in the development of the virtual world. These ten issues include: cross-border companies and intellectual property, e-finance, taxation of online transactions, telework, distant education, telemedicare, consumer protection, online crime and protection of personal information, open government data, online civil participation and more.

This project will compile opinions from all walks of society via the internet to foster a consensus through discussions and exchanges. The consensus can then be implemented through coordination of ministry jurisdictions and amendments or proposals in regulatory practice. This meets our goal of facilitating law adjustment.

We urge all parties to invest themselves in the direction of this project via the Platform and express their opinions so that government policies grow to better meet demands of the public and various industries.