By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

2009 has already been a dismal year for online storage providers and peer-to-peer (P2P) sites, which were heavily blitzed by government efforts to suppress piracy. Now, it's apparent that they will get no love from porn producers either.

Frustrated by what they saw as foot-dragging by South Korean law enforcement authorities, a group of 50 U.S. and Japanese porn producers said they would go after some 65,000 Korean Internet users and Web companies for illegally uploading their videos on file-sharing sites and gaining profit from them.

This is an expansion from the 10,000 Koreans named in the first lawsuit of the porn makers that was revealed in July.

About 70 online storage firms and peer-to-peer sites are targeted in the latest lawsuit, according to the legal representatives of the porn makers, who didn't reveal the names of the companies. However, it's easy to guess from the number that most of the major file-sharing sites are being targeted.

"A Web hard (online storage site) had hundreds of thousands of porn videos produced by the American and Japanese companies. To the extent of the legal action against Internet users who uploaded and downloaded these videos, our clients are seeking to go after the file-sharing companies who provided the space for the illegal activities in the first place," an official from the local law firm for the porn producers told Yonhap News.

The file-sharing sites will be sued on charges of violating the Copyright Law, and also the Korean Electronic Communications Business and Juvenile Protection Laws.

Granted, lawsuits are no stranger to the file-sharing sites, which have been repeatedly defending themselves against legal attacks from the music, film and television industries.

However, the companies had been upbeat about putting an end to their legal disputes with television stations and movie makers.

Online storage sites like Soft Line and Nowcom have recently reached an agreement with national television networks and have been preparing to provide legal television content on their sites.

The companies have also been relieved by the declining volume of illegal content traded on their networks, a result of stronger self-regulation efforts forced by the increasingly assertive government.

However, they are now on alert over the possibility that the lawsuit from the foreign porn makers could end up extending their legal troubles.

Critics say that the file-sharing sites, which have been focusing mostly on weeding out piracy of music, films and movies, could pay the price for their comparatively lax control of illegal adult content.

"We have been monitoring and deleting the videos of the U.S. and Japanese porn producers since they first filed the lawsuit. However, it's difficult to track the hundreds of thousands, and often millions, of files that are uploaded and shared every day," said an official from an online storage firm.

"And since that pornography is illegal in Korea anyway, the legal grounds for possible penalties are blurry, since it's debatable whether it is possible to protect the copyrights of illegal content."

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr