Go to contents

Soribada to Continue Its Music File Sharing Service

Posted August. 02, 2005 03:02,   

한국어

Controversy surrounding P2P (peer-to-peer) music exchange internet services and their related companies is heating up.

A total of 68 record companies charged some 3,000 netizens who distributed or shared music files through online user blogs to the supreme prosecutor’s office through the copyright protecting agency “NoFree” on July 29.

Prior to this accusation, the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP) submitted a plea for cessation of service to a court in December 2004 regarding the top Korean P2P service “Soribada.”

In response, operator of Soribada, Yang Jung-hwan, held a press conference on August 1 at the Korea Press Center located in Jung-gu, Seoul, and claimed, “In a situation where voluminous e-mail services handling over 100MB are being sustained, netizens will find other ways to share music files even with Soribada out of the market,” and expressed plans for the service to continue.

Yang added, “Music companies should not insist that we all buy CDs regardless of the development of technology, but strike a deal with record producers and internet services instead, like charging fees for MP3 files.”

Soribada revealed that a total of 4,800,000 songs had been sold through Soribada from December 2004 to June 2005.

A source at KAPP, however, said, “Soribada’s claim that they are not setting up copyright breaches is shying away from responsibility and will result in hundreds of netizens becoming law violators.”

Regarding this affair, a committee member of the copyrights department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Chae Myeong-gi, admitted, “Even if Soribada wins in court, it will be difficult to discharge netizens who post the illegal files.”



bsism@donga.com