About a month ago, a group of 50 U.S. and Japanese porn producers sued internet uploaders in Korea. see post.
An update on the news came up today. A month ago, the porn producers wanted the uploaders to be criminally punished. But the Korean prosecution didn’t indict the uploaders because their internal guidelines for indicting online copyright infringers require more than 3 times of infringement. Since most of the uploaders were sued for the first time for porn uploading, they were not indicted.
The porn makers are sueing select uploaders who meet the prosecution’s guideleines this time. If the selected uploaders do meet the prosecution’s guidelines, the prosecution will be pressured to indict the uploaders.
For those who are not familiar with the relationship between civil suit and criminal indictment in Korea, certain laws require civil suit before the prosecution makes an indictment. Intellectual property laws are notable examples. So, the porn producers have to file civil suits before requesting the prosecution to make indictments.
The porn producers are said to be considering other measures to suppress porn uploading. They are taking steps to have the uploaders indicted for other criminal charged, i.e., distribution of sexually offensive materials, and violation of the child and youth protection law.
Korea IP Law Blog 