Leading portals indicted on on-line piracy charges

SEOUL, Dec. 23 (Yonhap) -- Prosecutors indicted NHN Corp. and Daum Communications Corp., the nation's two largest Web portal operators, on Tuesday on charges of facilitating on-line piracy.

The Seoul Central District Public Prosecutors' Office said it indicted NHN,
operator of the country's largest portal Naver, and Daum and one affiliate under
each company for not restricting illegal trading of copyrighted music files
through their various services.
The prosecutors, in their filing with the court, sought 30 million won
(US$22,270) each from NHN and Daum. The indictment marks the first criminal
charges ever brought against portals related to illegal downloading.
The investigation began after the Korea Music Copyright Association, a group of
record companies, sued the two homegrown tech giants in July, complaining they
were suffering a dramatic drop in sales due to illegal downloading on portals.
Prosecutors raided the companies' headquarters in October.
Blogs and on-line communities hosted by Naver and Daum have become popular havens
for sharing free, unlicensed music and movie files.
The chief executives of the two companies, who have been questioned by
prosecutors, were not indicted due to lack of evidence proving they personally
neglected to monitor the pirated material.
The investigation concluded that Naver hosted some 10 million illegal music
files, amounting to nearly 25 terabytes, on its on-line communities and blogs.
Daum's services carried some 10 terabytes, or 3.4 million illegal music files.
The companies were negligent in not using an already-developed technology that
prevents uploading of pirated content, prosecutors said.
They also failed to answer to copyright holders' request to delete unlicensed
music postings and allowed continued uploading of copyrighted material, according
to prosecutors.
Record companies accuse major portals of ignoring the legality of the content on
popular pages they host because they bring in ad revenue. Punishing individual
Internet users, many of them teenage students, is not a solution, they say.
In a major case involving an on-line operator in 2006, police investigated the
head of NCsoft Co., a Seoul-based Internet game developer, for allegedly
facilitating piracy. He was not charged.
Prosecutors adopted a stricter policy this year to crack down on on-line
copyright infringement. South Korea is one of the world's most wired nations,
with 95 percent of households connected to high-speed Internet.
An appeals court recently affirmed a 10-month jail sentence and a fine of 5
million won (US$3,426) for a man who posted unlicensed movie files on the
Internet for profit