“Streaming is also ‘for sale recording; Ambiance music at small stores is fair use”

Korean law allows neighboring rightholders to collect performance royalties ONLY on ‘for-sale’ recordings. On the other hand, Korean law recognizes non-revenue performance of ‘for-sale recordings’ as fair use in limited contexts which have included ambiance music at small stores. In a case where neighboring rightholders sued a big department store for playing ambiance music off streaming service, a court ruled that streamed music are NOT for-sale recordings for the reason that they are packaged ‘for sale’ and therefore that the department store must pay neighboring rightholders. Open Net publicly criticized the outdated decision that, if applied to the fair use provision, exposed many small stores around the country to copyright liability.

Read Korean original here.