The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) announced a bill
which includes an so called "three strike out(or graduated response)"
provision on July 16, 2008 on its web site. The bill is expected to be
introduced to the National Assembly during its 2008 regular session
which opened September 1^ and will continue for 100 days until December 10.
The bill includes four major amendments to the Copyright Act: 1)
integrating the Computer Programs Protection Act into the Copyright Act,
2) providing computer program works related exceptions (article 101 bis
to article 101-2), 3) establishing the Korean Copyright Commission
(article 112, 112-2), and 4) providing so called =A1=B0three strike out=A1=
=B1 or
=A1=B0graduated response=A1=B1 measures (article 133-2).
I have translated the Article 133-2 into English and you can see the
translation of Article 133-2
<http://www.ipleft.or.kr/bbs/view.php?board=3Dipleft_5&id=3D488&page=3D1&ca=
tegory1=3D3>
at
http://www.ipleft.or.kr/bbs/view.php?board=3Dipleft_5&id=3D488&page=3D1&cat=
egory1=3D3
<http://www.ipleft.or.kr/bbs/view.php?board=3Dipleft_5&id=3D488&page=3D1&ca=
tegory1=3D3>
. You can get an English translation of the Copyright Act
<http://eng.copyright.or.kr/law_01_01.html> at
http://eng.copyright.or.kr/law_01_01.html .
According to the the Article 133-2, the Minister of Culture, Sports and
Tourism may order after the deliberation by the Copyright Commission;
1) online service providers (who provides email, blog, personal home
page, P2P or etc.) to warn the reproducers/transmitters of illegal
reproductions,
2) online service providers to delete or stop transmission of illegal
reproductions,
3) online service providers to suspend or terminate the user account
when the owner of such account has been warned through online
service providers about his copyright infringing activities and
still repeatedly transmits illegal reproductions,
4) online service providers to close the bulletin board that have
received orders to delete or stop transmission of illegal
reproductions more than three times, or
5) information and telecommunication service providers (broadband
Internet connection providers) to block connections to their
information and telecommunication network of such online service
providers who has been subject to a fine more than twice because
of its failure to implement filtering (Paragraph (1) of Article
104) or to a fine more than three times because of failure to
abide by the orders under the circumstances described above in 2),
3) or 4).
IPLeft and JinboNet is trying to stop the legislation going forward and
passed in the National Assembly.
Me and other activists at the IPLeft and JinboNet are aware of that
there are many similar legislation attempts or agreements between
right-holders and Internet service providers in other countries
including France, Japan, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia.
If anyone on the A2K list can provide his/her opinion about the =A1=B0three
strike out=A1=B1 provision of the Korean government or inform us recent
developments around this issue in his/her country, it will be very
helpful for us.
If an opinion statement can be prepared until Oct. 20 and it supports
the position of IPLeft and JinboNet, I would include it in a booklet
that consists of our position and related informational materials on
various legislative issues of 2008 regular session of the National
Assembly. We will distribute the booklet to some members of the National
Assembly. If you send us an statement on this issue after Oct. 20, we
can post your opinion on the IPLeft web site or send it to members of
the National Assembly. Please send your opinion statement or any
information on this issue to me (to.jisung@gmail.com).
Thank you,
--
Jisung Kim
Member of executive committee
IPLeft
to.jisung@gmail.com
http://www.ipleft.or.kr
Tel: +82-2-701-7687
Fax: +82-2-701-7112