In regards to last year’s tally, 5.2 million, or 90 percent of the total, were copyright infringements of local TV dramas, followed by 400,534 cases involving movies and 125,989 music-related thefts. (image: Descendants of the Sun)
SEJONG, April 24 (Korea Bizwire) – Offshore Internet sites cited for breaking local intellectual property rights have surged tenfold in the past two years, government data showed Sunday.
According to the culture ministry and the Korea Copyright Commission, as of 2015, 122 overseas sites had been found to have copied and used local broadcasting, film, music and other protected content without permission.
These sites have been barred from being accessed by South Korean Internet users.
“Authorities asked the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) to restrict access to these sites,” the copyright commission said.
The number of those caught is up sharply from the 44 detected in 2014 and the 12 in 2013.
Data showed that in the first three months of this year, authorities already had caught 61 foreign sites violating protected intellectual property content and took action to cut off access.
Broken down by country, 80, or 65.6 percent, were located in the United States. This was followed by 33 sites in Japan and four in China.
“The surge in overseas sites is mainly the result of tougher crackdowns of intellectual property violators in South Korea that is forcing many local operators to relocate their servers abroad,” an official source said.
In terms of individual cases, there were 288,088 intellectual property rights violations in 2013, followed by more than 2.03 million cases in 2014 and well over 5.73 million last year. In the January-March period of this year, violation numbers surpassed 3.01 million.
In regards to last year’s tally, 5.2 million, or 90 percent of the total, were copyright infringements of local TV dramas, followed by 400,534 cases involving movies and 125,989 music-related thefts.
The ministry said to deal with such violators it is working with the KCC and police to block Internet access for sites that break the law and move to prevent them from getting online advertisements. This, it said, will make it impossible for them to make a profit from their unlawful activities.
(Yonhap)
