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Anti-piracy efforts in Korea seem to be having some effect
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 23 April 2010
According to a report in The Economist, stats from one of the first countries to introduce a three-strikes system show that the crackdown on piracy has had some positive results on the local music industry.
While moves to introduce three-strike systems in New Zealand and France, and more recently here in the UK, have got more headlines, it was Taiwan and South Korea who first introduced a so called ‘graduated response’ system for tackling online file-sharing. And stats from the local office of the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry in the latter says that the South Korean record industry has seen sales rise 10% since the new anti-piracy system was introduced. Which, given the sales declines seen in most other territories, is pretty good going.
The Economist points out that there isn’t a direct correlation between three-strikes and the sales increases. Record sales were starting to rise there prior to a net disconnection system being introduced for persistent file-sharers, partly because in a country where physical product piracy was always rampant, the opportunities of the net more quickly outweigh the threats (and some new legit digital services have launched there in the same period), and partly because three-strikes was just the latest in a string of anti-piracy measures introduced by South Korean regulators keen to attract Western entertainment companies to the country.
Still, the combined anti-piracy efforts have, according to government stats, seen the amount of illegal music files available online via South Korean websites and file-sharing networks drop a massive 92% in the same period that record sales have risen by 10%, so presumably the country’s regulators and music industry chiefs are doing something right, even if, obviously, file-sharing does continue.
Though, The Economist adds, Korea doesn’t necessarily provide a useful case study for Western countries going the three-strikes route. Partly because of the nature of the local music industry pre-internet, and partly because the argument “your piracy is damaging our country’s cultural exports” has more effect there. The magazine concludes: “In France and Britain such arguments meet with shrugs, but in Korea they go down well”.
