sabiz

Thanks to the global expansion of Korean content, South Korea's copyright export reached $6.6 billion in 2018, with a record-high trade surplus of $1.4 billion. The country's copyright infringement rate in the legal content market has also decreased to 10.7%, reflecting significant improvements in public awareness.

However, there's still a long way to go. With the advancement of online environments and the widespread use of social networking services (SNS), copyright violations centered around content are still frequent. According to the Korea Copyright Protection Agency's 2019 Copyright Protection Annual Report, the legal content market amounted to 20.8 trillion won, and the scale of infringement reached 2.49 trillion won. Copyright violations are common not only among corporations but also public institutions, organizations, and other entities, often due to a lack of awareness about copyright.

Person A plans to watch a movie with friends over the long weekend. While choosing a film, Person B complains that the new release is too expensive. Person B suggests, "Let’s download the movie from a P2P site," while Person Y proposes, "Let’s use a torrent to get it for free." But is there a copyright issue with downloading movies from P2P sites and torrents?

It is illegal for Person A and friends to download movies without paying the proper fees. Downloading content in digital form constitutes 'reproduction' under copyright law, and reproduction is only allowed with the permission of the copyright holder.