By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

Television networks are upping their offensive against peer-to-peer pirates, threatening legal action should file-sharing sites fail to remove illegal videos from their networks.

The Internet units of the country's three national television channels ― KBS, MBC and SBS ― jointly issued a warning to 79 peer-to-peer and ``Web hard'' online storage services they accuse of being the most severe copyright violators.

The letter, dispatched through Seoul-based law firm, Yoon Yang Kim Shin & Yu, which represents the television stations, predicts a ``large scale'' of lawsuits against Internet companies that fail to introduce effective measures to prevent users from sharing illegal copies of television shows.

The 79 Internet companies named by the television networks include SK Communications, the operator of Nate (www.nate.com), the country's third-most popular search site, and Cyworld (www.cyworld.com), an immensely popular social networking service.

Nate and Cyworld are popular destinations for online videos, both for copyrighted and user-generated content, and the massive traffic generated by the Web sites has television stations taking a closer watch on copyright infringement.

Also on the list is Mgoon (www.mgoon.com), an online video service, and file-sharing services such as Nowcom (www.nowcom.com), which was also sued by a movie industry lobby last year, Wedisk (global.wedisk.co.kr), Endisk (www.endisk.com) and Idisk (idisk.paran.com), operated by Paran (www.paran), a search engine and portal.

The television networks had also sent similar warnings to seven peer-to-peer and Web hard companies in January.

``We will continue to negotiate with companies that are aggressive in introducing measures to protect the copyrighted broadcasting content. But we will fight companies that are passive in introducing better protection and continue to violate copyrights with a large-scale litigation campaign,'' said the letter.

The television networks' strengthened action comes at a time when the government has been pushing a clampdown on illegal online content.

From July, the country will enforce a new anti-file sharing provision that allows regulators to shut down Web sites after a third warning over copyright infringement, regardless of whether or not the copyright holders complained about it.

Internet users accused of illegally sharing copyrighted content will also be subject to the ``three-strikes'' rule, having their Web accounts severed. Critics argue that the new law could be abused as a censorship tool, due to its loose definition of ``copyrighted content,'' which could be anything from music and movies to news stories and blog postings.

Last month, prosecutors also indicted Kim Gyeong-ik, the chief executive of Pandora TV (www.pandora.tv), a video-sharing Web site, and Son Chang-uk, the head of Freechal (www.freechal.com), an online media and file storage service, both on charges of assisting copyright infringement on their sites.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr