소리바다 사건을 통해 본 우리나라 음악저작물 유통의 문제점과 대안 모색 = Legal Issues at Korean On-Line Music Market, represented by Soribada case, and Some Suggested Solutions

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

As the online music industry is growing so rapidly both in Korea and all over the world, the off-line companies, especially the recording companies, emerge frequently as mostly complained players in legal law suits. Under current Korean Copyright Act, the music recording companies are defined as holders of neighboring rights, not copyrights like in USA, Also, unlike the Napster case, Korean online music copyright infringement case is used to be initiated through criminal prosecution, mainly because the amount of compensatory damage to be allowed by the court is believed widely far below than that of real monetary damage and the concept of Punitive damage is not allowed under Korean civil actions, As a result, the cases are very hard to be settled comparing with USA' and the legal issues surrounding the Korean cases are mostly about whether 'aiding or abetting' requirements are satisfied under criminal code.
The Soribada case is no exception. It came to draw nationwide attention not only through its user number of about 13 million people, but also through criminal court proceedings. The Korean district court abstained its final decision, however, saying the main perpetrators are not specified in prosecutor's records. So, the main legal battle is changing its field to civil actions. In the midst of such civil action, another problem as well as unexpected legal claim came up to the front line. It is about reliability of current copyright management system. The Korean Copyright Act stipulates the copyright management system, modeled after US legal trust concept, but the role of the organization is actually defined as passive manager, not as active right-holder of copyright under the standard form of contract and furthermore. the related Ministry allowed only one copyright management organization in each area. But, the problem is not a few copyright holders do not give much confidence in the current role of such trusted organization for online business. and therefore they expressed their complaints through civil law suit for terminating such trust contracts.
As one of possible solutions, this paper suggests that the trust concept should be redefined as complete transfer of rights and thereby the trusted organization is enabled to work as copyright holders in online music industry. Also, together with such redefining steps, the online management network should be restructured to encompass fee collection and distribution function to bring back confidence to the copyright holders.
Finally, this Paper suggests, as another solution to activate Korean online music industry the restructuring of Korean compulsory licensing system under Copyright Act which is almost obsolete in its application for online music business.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 소리바다 사건의 개요
• Ⅱ. 소리바다 판결을 둘러싼 법적 쟁점들
• Ⅲ. 한국음반시장의 구조적 특색 모색
• Ⅳ. 제언