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Korean Brothers Arrested For File-Sharing Site 350

Posted by timothy from the pissumnida dept.
HarlanC writes: "This story discusses the arrest of two Korean brothers who run a website [warning, page requires Korean language support] that allows peer-to-peer file sharing. Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999."
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Korean Brothers Arrested For File-Sharing Site More

Korean Brothers Arrested For File-Sharing Site

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  • Ok, lets ignore for one moment the fact that no-one would run out and buy the tens of albums a week that some people take from servers just because they are there.

    Since most people copying mp3s don't care that much about the sound quality, they wouldn't be buying the $15 CD. $9 cassette tapes for them! Or can they play a game where just because REM's Reveal album comes in a hyper-expensive limited edition book version mp3ing it counts as $40 business lost, not $15?

    Come to think of it, if I were to post some of my vinyl rarities up could my local collectors shop claim $100 per track in lost business?
  • As it joins the United States in the list of corporate states, ah, "democratic" nations blatantly demonstrating the power they now wield.

    Remember back during the Cold War, when Soviet Russia was the Great Enemy of Democracy and Freedom? Its government closely monitored all copying equipment, and you could go to prison (or worse) for owning an unlicensed photocopier - let alone actually using the thing.

    I'm dumbfounded by the number of people posting to slashdot about how "they pirated/stole music so they should go to jai" - bloody hell, read the damn article, they're NOT being arrested for stealing books, they're being arrested for the equivalent of building a photocopier and letting anyone use it!

    *That* is what you tell Joe American Sixpack. That the US government arrested a guy for making photocopier software, just like the Soviet Union used to do during the Cold War, because the corporations don't want anyone using anything without paying a corporation for the privilege.

    (yeah, so not all corporations are like that - but the corporate profit mentality is one of the biggest field demonstrations of abuse-of-power::power that I've ever seen)

    And now South Korea is following suit. Oh, and by the way - Happy Korean Liberation Day! *choke*

  • blah (Score:5, Funny)

    by geomcbay ( 263540 ) on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @01:14AM (#2141192)
    God damn it. Yet another Korea-centric article. When are the Slashdot editors going to realize there's more to the world than just Korea?
  • In my experience the downloading of MP3's have served to promote artists, not to deprive them. This can also hold true when it comes to software. I am a professional designer who uses photoshop and the like at work, yet as a student I used warez versions simply because I could not afford the price of the software. Later, I land myself a job and ask the boss to buy those same packages for me to use professionally. Theft or promotion? If it wasn't for warez not a single designer would have enough experience to land their first job!
  • Now I don't mean to get off on a rant, but... [hbo.com]
    Someone remind me how the RIAA can charge $15 per CD, get $14 of that, and say that they aren't getting enough money? What about the artists, man?! I'd hope that they deserve something. I mean, god forbid that the RIAA would ever have to lose any of their precious, precious money. What are they even managing to spend it on that they need it so badly? That'd be an interesting story: Where The Money Goes: A VH1 Exclusive Look At The Lives Of Record Company Executives.

    The most pathetic thing is they don't realize that by trying to squeeze every last dime out of the market they're pissing more and more people off and, in effect, endorsing the P2P transferring.
    While I think the RIAA should crash'n'burn, at the same time, some things I agree with them on. Downloading entire albums should not happen (support artists!), but unfortunately human instincts are to Cheat, to Lie, and to Steal (and the artists don't get much, anyway). I mean, can anyone honestly say that they haven't ever been tempted to cheat on a test, or that they haven't ever lied to get out of something, or ever wanted to steal something so they wouldn't have to pay outrageous prices (see: Adobe [adobe.com], heh). No, I didn't think so.

    I seem to have gotten a bit off track. I think that someone (or some people) should start a new music union. Fuck if I know how it'd manage to grow, but I think that if there was something like that that would give more money to the artists, charge less for CDs, and, most importantly, not combat P2P sharing but support it, the world would be a better place.

    "Don't you hate pants?
    I hope he tells us to burn our pants.    "

  • Wrong link (Score:3, Informative)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <`gro.daetsriek' `ta' `todhsals'> on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @12:54AM (#2157426)

    Try http://www.soribada.com [soribada.com] if you want to see the site mentioned int he article.
  • Do they actuually report this kind of loss on their finincial statements? I'm not sure what it's like in Korea, but I remember being really pissed off here (the US) when companies were claiming losses in the hundereds of millions over what Kevin Mitnick did, and then turning around and telling their shareholders that things were never better.
    Does anyone know the laws behind this kind of thing? (either US or Korea)
    Slashdot, the best source of legal information on the net!

  • My views: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ziviyr ( 95582 )
    1. Regularly using reasonably costing commercial music you have not bought is bad.

    2. Placing music on media that cannot played (like on a CD-ROM drive) without warning the purchasers is bad.

    3. Point-to-point transfer of commercial music to combat otherwise inability to play above media currently owned is good and well within the moral rights of the f**ked consumer (even better in lossless format).

    4. Regardless of imaginary losses to piracy (not necessarily to real ones, which are not always avoidable), the ability to sample music in lossy formats to enable the consumer to effectively direct their dollars towards satisfactory music is good, often even to the evil beings trying to destroy the sharing networks.

    5. The warped notion that purchasers should be forced to pay full price for polluted (watermarked) audio is bad.

    6. The next time I see (insert overexposed crap-'musician'), I want to see (said musician) on one of those flaming crosses in the background of a Madonna video.

  • With the exception of Japan, most people in asia earn much, much less money than in the west, yet the cost of CDs, DVDs and software is often higher.

    The GDP for South Korea is $13,300 (according to the CIA World Factbook [odci.gov]) compared to $33,900 in the US.

    So is it any wonder then that such countries have more piracy? Relative to their wages, Koreans are paying 2 or 3 times as much for their music, videos and software. How many people in the US would pay $50 for a music CD or $100 for a DVD?

    And South Korea is a relatively rich country. The GDP in places like Thailand, Indonesia or Vietnam is less than a tenth of the US. Imagine paying $400 for a computer game or $2500 for Windows XP.

    No one in the right mind would, which is why piracy is so rife. If the music, video and software companies had any brains they would lower the cost of their products so that people could actually afford them.

  • OK, so let me get this straight, total sales are 31 million. But they are claiming that they lost 150 million in sales due to this program? I've got to be missing something...

    • Re:total sales are what again? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Vuarnet ( 207505 ) <luis_milan@ho[ ]il.com ['tma' in gap]> on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @12:39AM (#2132694) Homepage
      Well, technically, I think it would go something like this:

      Let's say they sell 2 million CDs, at $15 a piece.
      Now let's say there's 10 million copies of the CDs floating around in Korean cyberspace.
      Ergo, to the marketdroids, those 10 million copies at $15 each equal $150 million in CDs they should've sold.

      Not that they would ever sell that quantity of CDs in the first place, but then marketing and logic don't always go hand in hand these days.
      • ... and I bet Horse and Buggy sales dropped quite a bit when the automobile was introduced.
        It's called PROGRESS.
      • Valid point, but what other metric would you suggest to measure their loss (and I think you would agree, there has been *some* loss along the way.

        30% would have bought if they didn't have pirate copies?

        45%?

        It's not easy to say (I'd venture impossible), and since it's in their interest to hype up their claims, the RIAK & co haven't bothered to establish a rational sounding amount.
      • Well, most suits like that are called frivilous, hence the nature, make outrageous statements, that will mark the 'offending' side as automatically guilty - in eyes of the public that is. Read Mitnick case, he was thrown into jail, for corporate losses, by public companies. I sure as hell would like to see the losses show up in the end of the term reports to investors. I bet these losses will not show on the credibility of the company or industry as a whole. :wq

  • Those are some pretty impressive figures... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by achurch ( 201270 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2001 @11:39PM (#2170939) Homepage

    Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999.

    So they're claiming that they were expecting $185.5 million in sales in 2000? A 535% increase over the previous year? And I thought the RIAA was stupid...

    • Ok this has to be a dam low blow from the corporate world. We got Dmitri Sklyarov in jail for basically giving a presentation. Napster basically shut down from RIAA who believe that napster is lowering sails when all I can see is napster increasing sales. I bought more cd's when I was on napster then ever before. So this all goes to show that the corporate world will go as low as they need to go to make 10$.

      My 2 cents plus 2 more
    • "...even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999."

      I still have a problem when people try to cite facts like these as being evidence that pirated music improves sales. Now, throw out of your mmind all of teh number fudging and erroneously reported numerical values. The fact is that their sales increased from 1999-2000. But did this happen despite the piracy, or in spite of? In other words, who here can say how much their sals should have changed without the piracy? Would the lack of piracy have meant more sales jthus increasing their improvement? Or would the lack of piracy have meant less exposure so people would buy less new music thus having a neagtive impact on their potential sales growth.

      You can't simply look at one tiny piece of data and say "uh yup, folks, lookie thar... that thar proves I should steal music."

      Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of sharing music (especially from the standpoint that current copyright terms are unconstitutional and harming the public domain). But if you're going to complain about it, don't use fuzzy math. Leave that to the politicians.

      • Well, if there were any credibility of these companies in reporting that they are taking losses, they would report what their projections were for the previous two, three, or four years (prior to the year in question). Next, adjust the year in question's projected sales by how historically close (above or below) they've been and see where the numbers fall out. Since no one has actually done this type of thing which is very easy to do, I suspect that there is merit to the claims that sales have actually been improved, or worse case, there has been no actual losses.
        If you think about it, they have only biased reasons to lie about these types of things and not a single reason to say anything counter to their position. Thusly, anyone that's breathing should take EVERYTHING they say with a very large grain of salt.
    • There is no way this figure would hold up under close scrutiny. Many stable businesses consider annual sales growth of 10% to be solid. This sort of thing is found in the annual reports for companies. I would really, really like to get my hands on the sales forecasts in the annual reports for companies in the Recording Industry Association of Korea (translated into English of course). It is highly unlikely that they actually predicted this sort of phenomenal growth in their sales forecasts. More likely, they have made up this figure out of thin air based on the number of files transferred.

    • Re:Those are some pretty impressive figures... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A drunk walks into a bar and says to the bartender (with a drunken slur), "bartender, buy everyone in the house a drink, pour yourself one, and give me the bill."
      So, the bartender does just that and hands the man a bill for $37.00.

      The drunk says, "I haven't got it."

      The bartender slaps the guy around a few times then threw him out into the street.

      The very next day the same drunk walks into the bar and once again says (with a drunken slur), "Bartender, buy everyone in the house a drink, pour yourself one, and give me the bill."

      The bartender looks at the guy and figures to himself that he can't possibly be stupid enough to pull the same trick twice, so he gives him the benefit of the doubt, pours a round of drinks for the house, has a drink himself and hands the drunk a bill for $37.00.

      The drunk says, "I haven't got it." The bartender can't believe it, so he picks the guy up, beats the living day lights out of him, then thows him out into the street.

      The next day the same drunk walks back into the same bar and says (with a drunken slur), "bartender, buy every one in the house a drink, give me the bill." In disgust the bartender says, "what, no drink for me this time?"

      The drunk replies, "No, you get violent when you drink."

    • Re:Those are some pretty impressive figures... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The article doesn't cite any sources. It seems there was a failure to communicate. This page [atimes.com] is apparently based on the same sources, but has slightly different figures:

      Alleged lost sales: 200 billion won ($152 M)
      2000 sales: 410 billion won ($312 M)
      1999 sales: 380 billion won ($289 M)

      Presumably you can find this information on their official website, but it seems to be in Korean. In any case, it seems that in the article a decimal point has been slipped in by mistake, makeing a ridiculous claim into an apparently outrageous one.

    • Re:Those are some pretty impressive figures... (Score:4, Funny)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @12:11AM (#2171052) Homepage Journal
      I plan to make $500 million dollars next year. If I don't, does this mean I can have people thrown in jail?

      Good thing it's the Free Korea, as opposed to that evil stalinist state up to the north where they trump up charges and haul people off to the gulag.

    • As pointed out by another poster, the actual figures in the article are an order of magnitude larger (and yes, I did read the article, I just misread the figures). Even so, claiming $469 million in total sales is an increase of 61% over the previous year, which still seems pretty unlikely--though it would be nice to have figures from earlier years to compare.

  • Stop this (Score:4, Funny)

    by roxytheman ( 463262 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2001 @11:39PM (#2170941) Homepage
    Stop this already! File sharing should not be illegal! At least not the technology allowing it! File sharing is SO MUCH MORE than just porn and copyrighted mp3s!

    • Re:Stop this (Score:4, Funny)

      by nEoN nOoDlE ( 27594 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2001 @11:42PM (#2170959)
      I don't know what file sharing you're doing but mine involves nothing but copyrighted mp3s and porn.

      • You're forgetting the movies.

        And the occasional app or game.

        And sometimes people's cookies.txt. (I found one with Amazon one-click shopping once! ;)

        Hey, I think we might be able to make a case for the legality of downloading someone else's cookies.txt! Score one for p2p!

        • Re:No, there's definitely more... (Score:4, Funny)

          by dboyles ( 65512 ) on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @01:11AM (#2143959) Homepage
          One time while portscanning for port 80 (out of boredom, not for any malicious purpose) on my former dorm's subnet I came across a directory that the individual probably didn't want to have shared: the one containing the history file for his browser.

          His webpage portrayed him as a nice, churchgoing young man. But some of those URLs would suggest otherwise...

          "But I was sure www.girlongirl was a scripture quote site!"

  • Logical fallacy (Score:2, Redundant)

    by ilsa ( 197564 )
    Just because sales went up does not mean that sales would not have gone up *more* without this "interference." Of course not a popular thing to say here.

    Woohoo! did I get first post??

    • Re:Logical fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dboyles ( 65512 ) on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @12:41AM (#2120641) Homepage
      Just because sales went up does not mean that sales would not have gone up *more* without this "interference." Of course not a popular thing to say here.

      You're absolutely right, but just because 300 CDs worth of songs were downloaded doesn't mean that sales would have gone up by the total sales price of that 300 CDs.

      The record industry's absurd claims about how much money is being lost to piracy is just as ridiculous as /. posters who justify their theft with "Well I wouldn't have bought it anyway."

    • Re:Logical fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "Just because sales went up does not mean that sales would not have gone up *more* without this "interference.""

      I'm not disagreeing that there's a chance this program hurt record sales to some degree. However, I see no reason to believe that sales would have been quintupled without the presence of this program. At the very least, this would likely have been accompanied with a corresponding increase in CD player sales, for instance...

  • no concrete evidence (Score:4, Funny)

    by bigbadbuccidaddy ( 160676 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2001 @11:49PM (#2170990)
    "Soribada is probably affecting our business, but there is no concrete evidence," said Cho Jin-bae, who handles online marketing at the Seoul office of the EMI record label. For an industry that claims to be losing to piracy 5 times more money than it takes in, all from one source, the lack of concrete evidence suprises me. Or maybe the South Korean RIAA wannabees are even more mathematically challenged than their American counterparts. Frankly, I'm suprised they can crank in $30 million or so a year, what with 2 college kids in their way.
  • Fascism knows no borders and no political affiliation. Communism and capitalism, it makes no difference. We are all a bunch of slaves wherever we go.

    Who's going to protect the people when their liberties are being trampled by the very governments that are entrusted to protect them? Governments have turned into police states that continually spy on their own people. They are armed to the teeth and they won't give up their power easily. First they lie to you and tell you that you are living in the land of the free, then they disarm you, and then they enslave you without you even noticing that you're a slave. Anybody who thought that the internet would stay free and anonymous for long was just dreaming.

    Who are we gonna call? Ghostbusters? I am afraid we're all shit out of luck.

  • Where does it end? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sarcasmooo! ( 267601 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2001 @11:59PM (#2171023)
    War? Is that what capitalists that behave this way want? I mean, goddamnit. I'm a pacifist, but I'm also a realist. How many people can you harrass, deceive, and imprison before someone blows their fucking lid and torches a corporate office? In some countries, there are already riots inspired by this sort of abuse. I remember reading about a McDonald's being vandalized, and the golden arches becoming a hood ornament on someone's car. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR WAS STARTED OVER LESS. Jesus Christ. This bulllshit is never going to end. The only solution is to make money obsolete.
    • Dude, you need a chill-pill :)

    • Re:Where does it end? (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You're right. The Revolutionary War (whose, btw?) was started over injustices less significant than being prohibited from illegally copying CDs.
      • Aside from the point made about imprisoning someone for making software, that remark was made in general and not just as a comment on this particular "injustice". Without going into a whole diatribe, comparing the events that lead to the American Revolution (what other revolution would I be referring to in english, and how often is the term 'Revolutionary War' used to describe anything else) to current abuses perpetrated by the private sector, would need to include deaths caused by HMOs, deaths caused by drug companies (cures aren't as profitable as expensive, long-term treatment), corporate slave-labor [corpwatch.org], crimes against the environment [commoncause.org], bribery [opensecrets.org], money laundering [corporations.org], I could go on and on. So yes, the revolutionary war started over less.
      • I sometimes wonder why moderators like comments like this one.

        This is not a matter of opinion; it is a simple fact that the injustices the parent comment is referring to is not

        "making copied cd's illegal"

        it's "arresting people for writing software".

        The fact is that these guys were not arrested for copying cd's illegally. They were arrested for writing a program that people CAN use to pirate music. I can use FTP, IRC, or even Apache and a web browser to do this.

        The exploding point for the issue is when people who write web servers and ftp servers are legally responsible for what people use them for - and the authors of Apache are arrested for "sharing illegal content".
        • Well, I wouldn't mind the Apache lead developers being jailed, so long as they snag the developers of IIS too..

          We'll have Microsoft's high paid lawyers defending Apache, in a way..
  • "You'd be a fool to buy CDs when you can get songs on the Internet for free," said 17-year-old Lee Yong-suk, bobbing his head and swinging his shoulders while listening to South Korea's No. 1 chart hit, "Already One Year" at an Internet cafe in Seoul. Of course Lee found the love song, by a male duo called "Brown Eyes", using Soribada.
    Why indeed...
    • So. This one example of casual abuse is clearly indicative that everyone is pirating CD's at an astonishing rate. It's amazing that the record companies aren't spilling employees into the street, looting their corporate assets for the last dime, and closing up shop.
    • "You'd be a fool to buy CDs when you can get songs on the Internet for free," said 17-year-old Lee Yong-suk...

      What bothers me is that people like Mr. Yong-suk don't seem to understand that what they are doing is wrong. Often it's justified by talking about the evils of Big Business. The record companies suck, if you ask me. They screw over the little guy in an attempt to make a buck (times 10^6) off of consumers. It's exploitative. But so are other corporations (and individuals, for that matter). But that doesn't give us free reign to break the law.

      Piracy is going to happen. If you want to take what's not yours, go for it. Use whatever excuse you want. But don't call someone a fool for doing the right thing.

      Note: this is addressed more at the individual quoted in the article than at the poster

  • irony (Score:5, Funny)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquar ... m minus language> on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @12:12AM (#2171059) Homepage Journal
    today is korean liberation day

    cognitivedissonance = on

  • Story with more reasonable numbers (Score:5, Informative)

    by back@slash ( 176564 ) on Wednesday August 15, 2001 @12:16AM (#2171073)
    I suggest reading the article located here [excite.com] which contains the more believable numbers

    the industry says album sales in South Korea totaled $315 million in 2000, up from $292 million the previous year. .

  • warez (Score:2, Insightful)

    by slicer1 ( 8205 )
    does anyone even look at the fact that (yea maybe I have some software that I didn't buy) but I don't use everyday to make money, I personally would only use it to learn it and if I did want to use it for business I would buy it why would I buy something that I can't return for 500 dollars without knowing how to use it and if I like it enough to buy it and use it for business in the first place

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