As someone involved in the comic industry, where South Korea is a major player, I want to really stress that South Korea might be the country that is most proactive in the fight against piracy....
As someone involved in the comic industry, where South Korea is a major player, I want to really stress that South Korea might be the country that is most proactive in the fight against piracy. Yes, more than the US and its billion dollar corporations. Disney's and Nintendo's lawyers are almost child's play in comparison.
US companies might file DMCAs and get domains taken down, but that's generally where 99% of it ends because going after people internationally is more trouble than it's worth (financially), since sites crop up all the time anyway and most are hosted in countries whose authorities don't cooperate with US authorities much. Plus they're not gonna get any money back from doing it, only expenditure.
South Korea goes all the way. They will use any methods at their disposal to trace and identify anything they can about a site's owners (they have posted reports about this methodology in detail), then contact local and international law enforcement agencies and persistently cooperate with them until the owners are brought to justice. It does not matter how expensive it is, they will dump the money necessary to bring pirate site owners to justice.
One major South Korean firm, Kakao, has already taken down a multitude of famous websites for pirating their comic/webtoon content. They went as far as interviewing the site owners and published their testimonies alongside their success reports, to show how successful their are. They also post on twitter gloating about each of those achievements to the tune of thousands of replies in the comments hating on them (example from a few months back). Here they were a couple weeks ago "teasing" a new takedown with emojis and everything, just to show it's still ongoing.
They're also the reason Tachiyomi, one of the most popular open source manga reading apps on android, was shut down despite not hosting any content itself.
And as delineated in this article, the same methodology is going to be employed for streamed content.
Make no mistake, they are extremely serious about this. South Korean companies don't see this as a service issue at all, since they usually don't provide alternative ways to watch most of this content. This is entirely about punishing criminals, period.
I was unaware of how hard Korea goes in it's fight against piracy. As a sailor myself, I wondered why I never found any good sources for K-dramas and movies haha.
I was unaware of how hard Korea goes in it's fight against piracy. As a sailor myself, I wondered why I never found any good sources for K-dramas and movies haha.
It's kind of a joke in pirate circles that if you want to stay out of trouble you don't host Korean content, because they will swing at you with everything they have. Obviously Korean content...
It's kind of a joke in pirate circles that if you want to stay out of trouble you don't host Korean content, because they will swing at you with everything they have.
Obviously Korean content still gets pirated but it's not as widespread as the rest partially for this reason, usually being reserved for specialized sites.
If I understand this correctly, they're trying to curb international piracy of Korean shows? Genuine question: Are there any legal avenues to watch k-dramas and similar content? Or are we expected...
If I understand this correctly, they're trying to curb international piracy of Korean shows?
Genuine question: Are there any legal avenues to watch k-dramas and similar content? Or are we expected to only watch the very few Korean shows that do get a localized Western release like Squid Game?
The popular streaming services have been fighting to get more k-content on their platforms so you can access a decent chunk of the most popular dramas out there. However, the moment you want...
The popular streaming services have been fighting to get more k-content on their platforms so you can access a decent chunk of the most popular dramas out there. However, the moment you want something slightly less popular, you're out of luck. As with most piracy, it's very much an access issue rather than pricing or anything else.
Perhaps K-Drama execs don't have the relevant experience Hollywood's had in terms of piracy worldwide until now. That said, America's media landscape has never relented their fight on piracy...
Perhaps K-Drama execs don't have the relevant experience Hollywood's had in terms of piracy worldwide until now.
That said, America's media landscape has never relented their fight on piracy either which is clear doesn't work.
As someone involved in the comic industry, where South Korea is a major player, I want to really stress that South Korea might be the country that is most proactive in the fight against piracy. Yes, more than the US and its billion dollar corporations. Disney's and Nintendo's lawyers are almost child's play in comparison.
US companies might file DMCAs and get domains taken down, but that's generally where 99% of it ends because going after people internationally is more trouble than it's worth (financially), since sites crop up all the time anyway and most are hosted in countries whose authorities don't cooperate with US authorities much. Plus they're not gonna get any money back from doing it, only expenditure.
South Korea goes all the way. They will use any methods at their disposal to trace and identify anything they can about a site's owners (they have posted reports about this methodology in detail), then contact local and international law enforcement agencies and persistently cooperate with them until the owners are brought to justice. It does not matter how expensive it is, they will dump the money necessary to bring pirate site owners to justice.
One major South Korean firm, Kakao, has already taken down a multitude of famous websites for pirating their comic/webtoon content. They went as far as interviewing the site owners and published their testimonies alongside their success reports, to show how successful their are. They also post on twitter gloating about each of those achievements to the tune of thousands of replies in the comments hating on them (example from a few months back). Here they were a couple weeks ago "teasing" a new takedown with emojis and everything, just to show it's still ongoing.
They're also the reason Tachiyomi, one of the most popular open source manga reading apps on android, was shut down despite not hosting any content itself.
And as delineated in this article, the same methodology is going to be employed for streamed content.
Make no mistake, they are extremely serious about this. South Korean companies don't see this as a service issue at all, since they usually don't provide alternative ways to watch most of this content. This is entirely about punishing criminals, period.
I was unaware of how hard Korea goes in it's fight against piracy. As a sailor myself, I wondered why I never found any good sources for K-dramas and movies haha.
It's kind of a joke in pirate circles that if you want to stay out of trouble you don't host Korean content, because they will swing at you with everything they have.
Obviously Korean content still gets pirated but it's not as widespread as the rest partially for this reason, usually being reserved for specialized sites.
If I understand this correctly, they're trying to curb international piracy of Korean shows?
Genuine question: Are there any legal avenues to watch k-dramas and similar content? Or are we expected to only watch the very few Korean shows that do get a localized Western release like Squid Game?
The popular streaming services have been fighting to get more k-content on their platforms so you can access a decent chunk of the most popular dramas out there. However, the moment you want something slightly less popular, you're out of luck. As with most piracy, it's very much an access issue rather than pricing or anything else.
And following this process, I don't understand why you would spend money to try to curb piracy rather than license it out and make more money.
Perhaps K-Drama execs don't have the relevant experience Hollywood's had in terms of piracy worldwide until now.
That said, America's media landscape has never relented their fight on piracy either which is clear doesn't work.