earticle

영어

In digital age, the legal protection of technical measures is a necessary response to effectively protect digital works from the great threat of piracy triggered by digital technology and Internet. However, the excessive protection of technical measures can greatly restrict users' rights such as fair use, first sale doctrine or public domain. Particularly, the legal protection of access control measures in fact gives copyright owners a right to control access to digital works. Therefore, in amending and interpreting related provisions regarding technical protection measures, it is important to ensure an equitable balance between copyright owners and users that copyright law has pursued. In this regard, Korea has taken passive steps to legislate regulations of the technical protection measures. The Computer Program Protection Act of Korea stipulates that 'technical protection measure' means 'any measure to protect a program copyright'. It can arguably be interpreted to protect only right control measures. Nevertheless, the Korean Supreme Court recently found that with respect to the technical measure of Sony Playstation 2 consoles, which can be seen as an access control measure like Game Enhancer, the distribution of Mod chip that circumvents Sony's technical measure was a violation of the ban on distribution of devices disarming technical measures provided in Section 30(2) of the CPPA. However, the Court's decision is required to reconsider because The Acr protecr only copy control measures. In reality, it is not easy to distinguish differences between access control measures and right control measures. Also since many countries have taken steps to legislate regulations of both of them, Korea cannot help considering protecting access control measures. Therefore, This thesis suggests that Korea additionally implement the ban on distribution of devices disarming access control because the most significant threat to copyright owners lies in a preparatory act for circumvention. However, it should not forget to allow users to protect their non- infringing uses by exercising existing exceptions or defenses in copyright law.