The dominant perception among many Koreans is that any downloading activities without the copyright owner’s permission is considered “illegal.” In fact though the Copyright Act of South Korea recognizes that reproduction of copyrighted works for private use is regarded as “fair use” under Article 30 of the Copyright of Act.

the verdict of the Seoul District Court to cancel POSCO's application for an injunction against the Anti-POSCO Website is like a welcome rain during a dry season for the Information & Communication movement.

On March 4, 2000, the Jinbo Network Center(Korean Progressive Network) has requested that the judgement of the patent on the 'Remote Education via Internet' of Samsung Electronics Co. Limited be invalidated.

The proposed revision of the copyright law, which is now being discussed in the National Assembly, seriously violates the Constitution by using copyright to protect investments rather than the public good. Moreover, it also aggravates the already precarious situation of "digital libraries" by prohibiting access from outside the library. We strongly insist that the revision should not be passed because it will tremendously damage the public interest.

On July 9th, the Suwon District Court made preliminary decision against Soribada (http://www.soribada.com), a Peer to Peer (P2P) program for MP3 file sharing, should be suspended. This is the first judgement regarding this type of case since the Korean recording industry accused the Soribada managers of infringement of copyrights last January and the prosecution indicted them last August. Though the final decision for the prosecution indictment has not been decided, we are seriously worried about this judgement.

On August 28th, an open conference on the role of digital libraries was held at the hall of the National Human Rights Commission in Seoul, South Korea

The Intellectual Property Right is not merely a possession of copyright holders. Intellectual products would be meaningless if there were no users to enjoy them. It must be recognized that the fundamental aim of the Intellectual Property Right regime is to strengthen the consensus and exchange between the authors and users.

The Ministry of Information and Communication and also the Ministry of Culture and Tourism have provided an arbitration proposal regarding the expanded use of mobile phones which now includes playing music from MP3 files. The free MP3 files are played with an MP3 player facility on the phones (MP3 phones) and have now become a social issue. As it stands now, the proposal made by the government seriously violates the right of users and should be immediately withdrawn. Furthermore, any counterproposal must be revised to provide assurance of users’ rights.

We strongly oppose the inclusion of the copyright clause in the current FTA negotiation between Korea and the United States.