This time in Korea

Apr 22, 2008 09:57 GMT  ·  By

The matter of copyright is one of the most popular news subjects these days, but what's more important is actually the fact that most articles talk about illegal downloading or pirated content. Today, another file-sharing related news reaches the web as the Seoul authorities have started, once again, a serious campaign against eight peer-to-peer websites suspected for copyright infringement. More specifically, the prosecutors believe that the websites distributed movie content to Internet users, The Korea Times reported today.

The anti-piracy campaign was initiated by the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office at the demand of the Coalition of Anti-Piracy in the Korean Movie Industry, a special organization that fights for copyright holders, including no less than 128 local film producers, according to the same source.

"Internet users' illegally downloading movies and recklessly reproducing them is rampant here. We have constantly alerted them to suspend their controversial services but couldn't see any changes. So we took legal action against them," Kim Ji-hoo, spokeswoman for the filmmakers' rights group, told The Korea Times.

Since the distribution of copyrighted content is almost a phenomenon these days, the Seoul authorities are planning to launch an advertising campaign supposed to encourage Koreans to abandon sharing files that may violate copyright. However, it has been proved in many regions of the world that stopping piracy is extremely difficult and, even if there are lots of victims, count here software pirates sent to prison, people still download pirated content from the web.

"We should correct public ideas of copyright violation before making any legal counteractions. We produced short anti-privacy campaign films to raise awareness. They are now being shown at hundreds of movie theaters nationwide. Also, we plan to organize a variety of campaigns in a bid to raise public awareness of copyright violation on the Internet," the representative added for the same source.