By Kang Shin-who
The government has informed universities that it plans to impose royalties on textbooks copied for students, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Thursday.
The Korea Reprographic and Transmission Rights Association (KRTRA) will charge 4,190 won ($3.56) in royalties per year for every student. A ministry official said colleges duplicating textbooks for their classes without permission from authors will be subject to copyright infringement payments, according to the number of their undergraduate and graduate students.
Korea has approximately 3 million students at some 400 universities and occupational colleges.
Major universities with more than 23,000 students will ne required to pay over 100 million won every year.
However, colleges are objecting to the plan, although they agree on the need to ban illegally copied textbooks. “’Irregular’ copies are not used for all classes. The ministry should investigate the reality about unauthorized copies at colleges and then charge money,” said a representative of Kyung Hee University in Seoul.
Some other colleges pointed out that the ministry needs to explain how it computed the exact sum. “The government first needs to explain what data or statistics were used to calculate the copyright fee of 4,190 won,” said a representative of Sunkyunkwan University in Seoul.
“There are also students studying with authorized books. The government is trying to normalize copying books illegally by imposing the fee,” said Kim Yoo-jin majoring in business at Pusan National University.
Another student at Yonsei University said the copyright fee is okay with her as long as the universities pay the money, because it is to respect the copyrights of books and any other education materials.
The ministry said KRTRA had looked into whether textbooks and video clips used in college lectures were copyrighted or not over five months in 2008 before fixing the fee.