By Yoon Ja-young
The number of smartphone users has surpassed 20 million and wireless Internet has become available everywhere. The country is rapidly turning smart, but it is going through the same problem as the desktop era. People are downloading illegally copied smartphone applications, just like they did with software.
According to a survey by the Korea Copyright Commission, one out of five smartphone users have illegally downloaded apps or content for free. They used black market, unofficial overseas app stores or P2P sites where people share files as well as file storage services. Online communities are also a major source of copyright infringements.
In a survey on application development companies, 16 percent had experienced copyright infringements, and 54 percent of those said the breach had reached a risky level. A local game app company released a product on T Store, an app market, in March last year. A month later, it discovered the source file on file storage services, online cafes and blogs. It had to request portals delete the app and postings.
The commission started running a smartphone application copyright protection system, which automatically collects illegally copied apps. “We have been monitoring file storage services and P2P sites searching for illegal copies, and we strengthened the monitoring on smart sectors by setting up the protection system,” a spokesman for the commission said.
Though Korea is an IT powerhouse, it has fallen behind other developed countries in terms of copyright protection. The ratio of illegally copied software was 42 percent according to 2010 statistics, much higher than the average for OECD member countries at 27 percent. Even some government organizations and state-run institutes turned out to be using illegally copied software, data submitted by the culture ministry showed.
“It has been improving slowly. The illegal copy rate has been falling each year by around 1 percentage point but it is still double the figures in the United States or Japan,” the spokesman said.
He explained that the biggest problem was a lack of consciousness about intellectual property rights. With regard to smartphone apps, users lacked a sense of guilt as copyright infringement is so rampant here. “They believe the applications are something free that they can download online.” In the survey, 31.6 percent said they illegally downloaded apps because many people around them were doing the same thing. Oh Dong-hyun, a researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute, points out that very few people here believe they should use official software, due to the lack of understanding or education on copyrights.
By belittling the intellectual property, people who illegally download are hampering the growth of the app industry just as software makers suffer damages. “The lack of recognition of the importance of the software industry and the high ratio of illegal copies weaken competitiveness in the software industry,” Oh said. According to the think tank, the country’s software industry ranked 14th among 19 OECD member countries in terms of competitiveness, disappointing when considering its strength in hardware.
Research indicates that protection of copyrights could help the software industry blossom. Sogang Research Institute for Market Economy estimates that the software market could grow by between an additional 731.3 billion to 1.7 trillion won when the ratio of illegal copies drops by 10 percentage points. It will also create between 56,000 to 88,000 more jobs, according to the report.
“We need systematic compensation and protection of intellectual property rights when it comes to software,” Oh said, stressing the country should set up a system and social atmosphere recognizing the value of software.