S. Korea extends copyright period
p2pnet news | Politics:- Bowing to pressure from the entertainment cartels, South Korea has extended its copyright period for royalty payments.
It’ll now be 70 years instead of the former 50 years after the original copyright holder dies, “as a step to meet the requirements of the ‘provisional’ free trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and the United States,” says the Korea Times.
“Local publishers complain that companies may be not be able to publish as many translated books as they do now, not only because of costs but also due to more complicated and tightened requirements for copyright protection.
Adds the story:
“Under the FTA, Korea is obliged to extend the period of a variety of IPR rights of U.S. companies.”
But, “Legislatures of Korea and the United States have yet to ratify the accord.”
Also See:
Korea Times – Copyright Protection Extended to 70 Years, December 18, 2007
Want to help p2pnet stay online? Please click here.
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
December 19th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Well, there is another barrier to freedom of speech and expression…
December 19th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
A sad loss for the people of S Korea.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Yeesh. They might as well move north, because it’s obvious their government doesn’t care jack shit about their rights.
December 30th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
It would perhaps have been wiser to shorten the copyright period from 50 to 30 years instead of extending it. However, the problem with for instance file sharing is that it will not be reduced even if the copyright expired at the death of the initial copyright holder (if we are talking about music for instance).