By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

Prosecutors are investigating domestic file-sharing portal sites for alleged copyright violation practices, including unauthorized content reproduction and distribution.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said Monday that it had begun probing eight peer-to-peer sites at the request of the Coalition of Anti-Piracy in the Korean Movie Industry. The coalition was established in July last year in association with 128 Korean film productions.

The anti-piracy organization blamed the Web sites in question for infringing upon film producers' rights by unlawfully distributing movie content in cyberspace.

The eight accused firms are Nowcom (running PDBOX and CLUBBOX), KTH (running I-Disk), SOFTLINE (running TOTOROSA), Media Networks (running M-File), KUTECH (running Endisk), UZ Interactive (running WawaDisk), iSERVE (running FOLDERPLUS), and EZWON (running WeDISK).

Prosecutors, now compiling information to probe, will soon summon officials of the P2P companies to question them over alleged wrongdoings.

``Internet users' illegally downloading movies and recklessly reproducing them is rampant here,'' Kim Ji-hoo, spokeswoman for the filmmakers' rights group, told The Korea Times. ``We have constantly alerted them to suspend their controversial services but couldn't see any changes. So we took legal action against them.''

The rights group has already filed civilian and criminal lawsuits against them on behalf of 35 local film makers for ignoring copyright violation activities in their services.

According to the Copyright Protection Center, it detected more than 2 million cases of visual content being circulated without copyright holders' permission during the first quarter of this year, much higher than 170,000 music file cases and publication content with 945,000 cases.

The center said this damage to the media industry, including the movie industry, was estimated at more than 2 trillion won as of 2006, adding actual damages could be much worse given the vastness of the Internet in Korea.

Kim said Internet users still consider illegally downloading copyright-covered content a minor violation.

According to the Korea Culture & Content Agency's survey in 2006, of 1,000 respondents, about 21 percent had downloaded cultural content through Internet Web sites such as P2P services without permission. But 70 percent of them considered the practice not illegal.

``We should correct public ideas of copyright violation before making any legal counteractions,'' the spokeswoman said. ``We produced short anti-piracy campaign films to raise awareness. They are now being shown at hundreds of movie theaters nationwide. Also, we plan to organize a variety of campaigns in a bid to raise public awareness of copyright violation on the Internet.''

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism last Tuesday announced comprehensive measures against these illegal acts. The ministry, which is teaming up with the National Police Agency and interests groups in the media industry, will act together to clampdown on the burgeoning crime.

pss@koreatimes.co.kr