Music labels to sue 4,000 Internet Users

July 20, 2005

Well I
haven't heard much legal action out of Korea but it seems that at least 60
record companies have decided to sue over 4,000 individual file sharers for
distributing music online through their own personal blogs. Seems they were
warned and given a 6 month grace period but the swapping
continued.

The internet portal Naver said posted what the
music industry was threatening to do but it didn't seem to have any effect. The
record companies said that Naver didn't seem to put much emphasis or take
seriously their intentions so they went ahead with their plans and now, court
action for 4,000 plus online users. One wonders the amount of time it would take
to take legal action against 4,000 individual file sharers. The Korean court
system must be havin' a slow down lately.

The move
would mark the first action taken by the recording industry against
netizens after a revised copyrights law recognizing expanded transmission
rights to creative digital contents took effect in
January.

The revised
law grants rights to transmit music files to music players and recording
companies, which were previously limited to copyright holders like
composers and lyric writers.

"We intend to
prevent recurrence of copyright infringement by giving warnings to online
service providers rather than seeking certain payment or legally punishing
individual bloggers."

To read more, check out what's goin' on in the Far East
by visiting The Korea Times.

Source: Korea Times