KTV has withdrawn its criminal complaint against singer Baek Ja. In February 2024, KTV filed a police complaint against Baek Ja for copyright infringement over a satirical video he uploaded to YouTube titled “(Presidential Office sings) Impeachment is needed~#SatiricalSong.” The video parodied then-President Yoon Suk-yeol. KTV’s sudden withdrawal of the complaint after Yoon’s impeachment has raised suspicions, though the withdrawal itself is still seen as the right decision.
It was legally baseless and an abuse of copyright law for political purposes. KTV claimed that Baek Ja violated their moral rights (specifically, the right of attribution and the right to integrity) by failing to credit the original creator and altering the video in a way that supposedly damaged their reputation.
However, moral rights are only violated when such acts mislead the public into believing someone else created the original work or when the alterations distort the creator’s intention so severely that their reputation is harmed. In this case, it is obvious the video is a satirical parody, clearly labeled as such, and no reasonable viewer would mistake KTV as the original creator or believe KTV made a video in which the president sings about needing impeachment.
Therefore, the claim that Baek Ja’s video infringes on moral rights is unfounded. Punishing such content would eliminate the space for parody altogether. This case exemplifies the misuse of copyright law to suppress political criticism. Although the complaint was ultimately dropped, it serves as a reminder of how copyright law can be distorted to silence creators. We, Open Net, call for a broader social discussion about the problems with criminal enforcement of copyright infringement.
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