sabiz

The Supreme Court has ruled that sharing torrent files containing obscene videos on websites also constitutes distribution of obscene materials, making it punishable under the law.

On the 29th, the Supreme Court's third division (led by Chief Justice Min Yoo-sook) upheld the lower court's ruling, confirming a one-year prison sentence for Mr. Noh (50), who was indicted on charges of distributing obscene materials under the Information and Communications Network Act.

The Supreme Court stated, "A torrent file, created for the purpose of sharing obscene videos and containing the necessary information for transmitting these videos via torrent, constitutes 'information related to the distribution or public exhibition of obscene videos,' which is prohibited under the Information and Communications Network Act."

It continued, "By using such torrent files to enable unrestricted access to obscene videos, the act effectively achieves the same result as the distribution or public exhibition of obscene material, which is punishable under the law."

Mr. Noh was indicted for uploading 8,402 obscene videos to a torrent site hosted on a U.S. server between November 2017 and September 2018. He had previously been sentenced to prison terms with suspended sentences for similar offenses and was found to have earned approximately 70 million won (around $59,000) in profits over a six-month period from February to August 2018.

In his defense, Mr. Noh argued that he only uploaded data files containing video-sharing information, not the videos themselves. However, both the lower courts ruled that if the file allowed users to access the videos without restriction, it met the criteria for distributing or publicly displaying obscene material, and sentenced him to one year in prison. The Supreme Court affirmed this judgment.