According to a report by Munhwa Ilbo on Thursday, Dongnyuk Law firm plans to bring charges against 20 Korean Internet users for violating copyright laws. Those netizens are accused of downloading and sharing singer Baek Ji-young’s music video “Concert for Adults” and several movies -including “Kill Bill 2”, “The Grudge 2”, and “Shin Yukiguni”- on the Internet without permission.
The law firm is entrusted in dealing with criminal lawsuits relating to copyright infringement by Digitalprizm, the copyright holder of Baek Ji-young’s music video; Taewon Entertainment, the company that imported “Kill Bill 2” and “The Grudge 2”; and Hanmaek Entertainment, the representative company for the Korean Film Producer Association.
The Munhwa Ilbo report cited the firm’s lawyer Jo Myun-sik saying, “We confirmed that as many as 3,500 Korean Internet users have violated the copyright law. We sent the certification of contents to a 100 of them, and we are initiating procedures to negotiate with them. But 20 refused to negotiate, so we made criminal complaints against them.”
The certification of contents states, “In return for not being sued, elementary, middle and high school students should pay W100,000, university students W300,000 and adults W500,000 in compensation.” Jo also said, “Bringing charges against Internet users was a desperate countermeasure to raise awareness about copyright infringement throughout society. Without improving the institution, we cannot help but sue individual Internet users.”
The Korea Recording Industry Association plans to ask the Cyber Terror Response Center to investigate 10 Internet users who share MP3 files through online storage services and Internet portal sites. The Association once filed copyright violation complaints against 50 Internet users for using Soribada, a service provider of P2P (person to person file sharing), with the Cyber Crime Investigation Department of Seoul Central Public Prosecutors’ Office last December.
Meanwhile, since the Internet users are faced with lawsuits from the copyright holders, they established an Internet café called “The Group for Impeaching the Law Firm Dongnyuk,” on April 28 to discuss countermeasures for the criminal lawsuits and contents certification brought against them, reported Munhwa Ilbo.
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