초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The meaning of "public performance" has recently extended in Korea. Now, in view of the Korean Supreme Court, public performance includes rental, lease or lending audiovisual recordings with AV equipment and rooms. It makes the limits of acknowledgment of public performance rights ambiguous. In addition, it reduces the public domain, which had not been covered by the exclusive right granted by copyright law. It is absolutely against Article 1 of the Korean Copyright Act. It also has necessarily brought rapidly increasing criminal copyright infringement cases. The application of criminal codes should be done by the strict interpretation. However, many of the recent decisions by the Korean courts have been against this principle. The Principle of Subsidiarity and Analogy Prohibition even seems to be discarded in public performance rights related cases. The range and limit of public performance rights should be reexamined. As a premise of the reexamination, a clear distinction between public performance and rental/lease/lending should be made. The meaning of "public performance" in the Korean Copyright Act should be consistent with that in the everyday usage of general public. A revision of the Korean Copyright Act will also be a good suggestion. Making a definition clause for rental/lease/lending might be helpful in establishing a firm standard which can be used to prevent the court from unjustifiably expanded application of public performance infringement clauses.
