As most know, the US/South Korean FTA (free-trade agreement) has recently been concluded but there is some concern that the FTA — as it is now — will allegedly cause Korea to give up all fair-use material that currently is on the internet, in South Korea.
One should note, however, that the concerns expressed by the author seems to play up a potential threat to P2P services and the massive illegal book copying that goes on at universities in Korea, rather than any real concern about academic and political freedom in South Korea or any real threat to IP rights and issues. I know that my Korean “webhard” space will not vanish since it is used for legal purposes. There are simply no legal grounds or motivation for the Korean Government to put an end to “webhard” services such as the one I use.
IMHO, this complaint is a non-issue since the copyright concerns mentioned in the FTA seem legitimate and reasonable — per what I have read — and this complaint is most likely an attempt to get Korean netizens and students (illegal text book copiers) to agitate against the FTA, even now. Here are a few gems from the referred site:
Copyrights and patents were originally introduced in the Anglo-American legal system to stimulate creativity and technological development, the ultimate goal being benefit for the society as a whole. The recent developments of restrictive ‘IPR’ regimes violate the original spirit of these provisions. Applied to countries with historically different knowledge regimes, the ramifications are enormous.
“Historically different knowledge regimes” such as Nolbu’s “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is also mine”? or this boner:
Korean human rights and other civil society groups point to the lack of fair use provisions and the chilling effect this will have on the development of knowledge sharing tools, critical discussion, artistic expression and education. They also are concerned about the great potential for abuse: These provisions can be easily invoked by authorities to justify surveillance and outright censorship on political, cultural and social grounds. Memories of such a society are still fresh. Koreans fought hard to free themselves from long decades of authoritarian rule (much of which was at least indirectly US-supported), establishing one of the worlds most vibrant democracies.
Again, this is the same clever artifice used to promote an anti-America agenda and to derail any real attempt at examining human rights violations by North Korea, primarily by pro-North Korean elements, in the south, that have hidden and continue to hide under the mantle of Korean nationalism.
This nonsense seems to have fooled someone at boingboing as well. Pity.
25 Comments
Why would inclusion of stronger IP obligations make a difference to Koreans? There are already quite strict IP laws on the books — laws which are not enforced. These FTA agitators seem not to recognize the Korean strategy: Promise anything to get what you want right now, then don’t keep the promise. You’ll be rewarded later for your breach by more goodies, which you will obtain at the cost of another, yet-to-be-broken promise..
mr. carr is correct. IP protection policies do not apply to Koreans. they certainly are on the books and agreed to; they’re just never enforced.
It takes a major leap in logic to argue that the vendors who’ll be arrested for selling illegal copies of Starcraft II in Yongsan will be in fact victims of a crackdown on freedom of expression at the hands of the US government.
Theft is theft.
actually, I thihk I read somewhere naver might start getting rid of a log of file sharing forums and blogs for two reasons.
FTA with US.
Naver wants to go global. They don’t mind being purchased by google or yahoo to do it. They’re also considering buying a smaller competitor of google or yahoo.
Copy rights enforcement will gradually come about, even in the ROK.
i don’t think it’s as rampant as say China and Vietnam, where they have stores and huge outlets selling bootleg dvd’s, cd’s galore. Someone told me when he/she went to Vietnam, one of the must purchase items were piles of bootleg discs.
Non-theft is non-theft.
Non-theft? Freebies for everyone? Who pays? Who cares, just charge it to the corporations. They’re rich anyway, they can afford it. They are only in business to screw us anyway.
Since I am getting my old Korean IP blog going again I commented at length about this in response to this absurdity.
http://dramman.blogspot.com
The way I see it, it’s almost offensive to suggest that someone who copies something for their own personal use is a criminal (spare me the legalese, it’s hypocritical to say otherwise as most people have done it, either by taping a song on the radio that they liked or TiVo-ed their favorite show). However, those who sell pirated copies, therefore profiting from it, are crossing the line.
Hey, I’m not saying its criminal, but I do know it is wrong or at least unfair. Heck, I’ve bought those 4 DVDs for man won from the guy at the subway station, all the while feeling bad that I was cheating some Hollywood people out of their hard earned cash. But there has to be some line where companies can earn profits, or they are either going to go out of business or they are going to stop making them.
snow,
Maybe, but if they weren’t making any money they’d already be in a different business. I’d say they are making a killing, actually. The first blockbuster, Jaws, grossed a few million dollars when it came out. Nowadays, a blockbuster will earn over a billion worldwide in tickets sales, DVDs and merchandising.
That may be true, someguy, but for every successful blockbuster there are many failures. Investing in the movie biz is a very risky proposition. And lots of the entertainment companies have lost alot of money because of copying. I think they should try to find ways to use the demand for copying to sell more product, but it’s not an easy thing to make a profitable system. Anyway, the entertainment biz is hardly the high profit margin biz one might expect. You would think that a company like Disney would be raking it in, but a couple of years ago, for example, they made profits of about 240 million. Sounds great right? Well, considering that revenue was around 8 or 9 billion, that means that their profit was a mere 3 or 4%. Not exactly a killing considering their costs and investments to get such a meagre profit. And Disney is obviously one of the most successful ones. This type of scenario is pretty typical in most industries. A profit of 3 to 4% is relatively normal and a company is doing well if it does 10% or more. Often companies don’t profit or have a loss for the year, which obviously is not a situation that can continue for a long time.
Sure, but one thing: movie studios have been accused for years of using creative accounting to make it appear as if loses were incurred during the production of what are in reality blockbusters. I believe Peter Jackson has recently accused the studio that produced the LOR trilogy of using devious accounting practices to cheat him out of his real share of the profits.
Can I still get the last two Soprano episodes off mininova?
Someguy, that is true that there’s always been rumors of creative accounting in Hollywood, but when it comes to overall company finances, not individual pictures, the company can’t cook the books so easily. They have to file a 10K form every year with the SEC and are audited by an outside agency. In this way, they are just like any other large public company. They may be creative in what they tell creditors (including directors and others who take ‘points’ in a movie) but for the official books of the overall company, they can’t do that nearly so easily.
And for every successful movie that makes money there are probably ten flops that lose. Same in the music biz, though producing an album generally costs less than making a movie, I would expect. Most movies and musical artists are money losers for the companies. That’s why many music groups are dropped by their labels after an album or two. If they fail to profit, the company cuts them loose. Same in the movie biz. The studios back alot of movies, but many are busts, and a big flop can lose alot of money.
“And for every successful movie that makes money there are probably ten flops that lose. ”
Well, that is most certainly not due to pirating. That’s bound to happen when you’ve got an industry that’s built on nepotism instead of artistic merit as it should be. Name me an actor and I’ll tell you who they are related to.
It’s a cute little diatribe, to be sure… But isn’t Korea already obligated to do all the things in the FTA concerning copyright under treaties it’s already signed? (The Berne Convention, the TRIPs agreement, etc…) Seems like this is definitely the ’soft’ approach, considering the alternative of trade sanctions.
Zonath,
Not really, actually. International responsibility has very little precedent over national sovereignty. Simply put, international laws and domestic laws are independent from one another and regardless of whether a country signs a treaty, it remains sovereign to adopt it’s own legislation. In other words, what goes on within the borders of a country is ruled by domestic law, not international law. So, you can see, Korea is not obligated to do anything…although it would be advised to (hence what you’ve referred to as the ’soft’ approach).
Of course I do realize this… I was merely pointing out that South Korea has signed several treaties concerning intellectual property protections, and that failure to abide by the terms of those treaties (such as turning a blind eye to blatant infringement) opens it up to the possibility of Bad Stuff like trade sanctions. If South Korea isn’t at least adopting and enforcing the minimum standards laid out in the terms of its international treaties, then it’s pretty likely that sooner or later someone’s going to call them on it and push for penalties. In short, the US pushing for this stuff in an FTA is pretty much just asking South Korea to start living up to obligations it already has by virtue of the treaties it’s signed.
I guess Hillary Clinton’s against this trade deal, as well, calling it ‘unfair’ to Americans…:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200.....n_korea_dc
The difference would eventually be introduction of a copyright regime like the one Canada is apparently getting now, where big companies get to sue you on false IP violation charges, and you, as the little guy who cannot afford litigation, are screwed. Where P2P will be illegal for legitimate uses, as well as illegitimate ones, and where American-length copyright extensions (now so long that “Public Domain” means “stuff so old nobody remembers when it came out”) will apply here.
Sure, the copyright violations in Korea are sizeable and copyright law should be enforced here. But why the hell should Koreans give up Fair Use? Why should Koreans accept ridiculous levels of DRM on their media? Why should they give up what is, right now, a relatively free culture. (Read the book Free Culture here for free, and you’ll see that, as Lawrence Lessig argues, copyright laws have profound implications for culture and society in general. Korea’s under-enforcement might be problematic, but so is America’s over-enforcement and over-litigatory approach to resolving copyright, because even Fair Use is open to judgment, and litigation is expensive.)
And by the way, the creative accounting problem is more in how they account for losses. If you download an MP3 that’s worth 99 cents according to iTunes, why is it worth $50,000 when you’re sued over it? And why should that kind of insanity be exported to other countries? (As it apparently is being exported to Canada.) The RIAA claims losses when their profits are actually going up year by year. The losses are of (unrealistically) projected sales.
By the way, the snipe at BoingBoing is uncalled-for. Cory Doctorow is talking about a serious IP issue about which he knows a hell of a lot more than I’d imagine anyone visiting this site. The guy worked for the EFF for years on end. Complaining that Cory Doctorow isn’t talking about North Korea is a nonsequitur. He’d probably agree that DPRK is a mess and people need to look at that, but he’s not talking about that: he’s talking about IP laws.
Good grief, man, are all discussions of South Korea illegitimate unless they shallowly praise America and bring up North Korean human rights issues? That’s the most irrational dismissal I’ve seen of this discussion, ever.
“Gordseller”, Doctorow quoted from another online essay that was so much ideological tripe and Doctorow’s title: “US makes Korea eliminate fair use” is unduly sensationalist since the U.S. was not and is not interfering in fair usage in South Korea (to my knowledge). The original essay (vanished?) clearly had an anti-US bent to it, not that I care but it smelled of ideology rather than being the result of well reasoned thought. Should I point out how certain anonymous Korean netizens have been actively seeking to make trouble or have you been hiding from the mad cow protests?
I really think that Doctorow was so busy that he really did not give his source material a good read and neither did you. The guys at Boingboing *sometimes* sound like they are looking for a good ideological rant rather than rationally examining a topic or event, thus I always read their blog with a measure of judgment reserved.
The source document has since disappeared as well, just like so much nameless net-driven anti-FTA agitation.
Fair Use. Korea. Fair Use. Korea
Does not compute. Does not compute.
Korea’s idea of “fair use” is epitomized by universities that provide “course packs” containing photocopies of entire books and articles and university copy centers that will make bound counterfeit photocopies of any book you bring them from the library.
They’ve been allowed to get away with this bullshit for so long they now believe it’s their inalienable right (no doubt with a 5,000 year pedigree) to do so in perpetuity - sort of like adverse possession of real property.
The US shouldn’t give them an FTA that is really a species of managed trade pursuant to which Korea will “Promise anything to get what you want right now, then don’t keep the promise. You’ll be rewarded later for your breach by more goodies, which you will obtain at the cost of another, yet-to-be-broken promise.” But it should drop the hammer under existing law and agreements for all Korea’s past and continuing violations as a prelude to negotiating a genuine free trade agreement, with hair trigger punitive measures built in to deter Korea Inc from practicing business as usual.