The Soribada Server Will Be Closed on the 30th. Will the Music File Exchange Be Disappeared?

Because of the provisional disposition of prohibiting copying musical albums of the MP3 music file sharing service ‘Soribada’ by the court, the ‘Soribada’ file sharing server at the KIDC in Nonhyun Dong, Kangnam Gu, Seoul will be closed as early as the 30th. From that day on, millions of ‘Soribada’ users cannot share music files anymore.

Do those users stop sharing music files and go back to the album market?

The Internet industry understands this as just ‘symbolic meaning’ to accept will of the Korea Music Industry Association ‘to protect the intellectual property right and to preserve the profits of music companies.’ They think it is impossible to block sharing of MP3 files through other P2P (Peer to Peer) services similar to ‘Soribada.’

The industry said, “It is impossible for the Korea Music Industry Association to check illegality of each and every P2P services and stop their service.”

It is known that there are about 1,000 P2P services to be used for sharing files such as ‘Guruguru’ and ‘Dangnagui’, and those can substitute ‘Soribada.’ In America, file sharing programs such as ‘Flyster,’ which can hide IP’s to avoid censorship, are being developed.

If ‘Soribada’ is closed, the users can share music files at the P2P services that are used to work effectively, to share intellectual properties, and to cooperate between small groups. The demand for the pay P2P services such as ‘Mania Music’ seems to be increasing.

And there also is a possibility that some programmers create a new P2P service instantly and make a ‘small’ Soribada in a community level. A programmer Choi, Soon-Kyu (26) said, “Any fairly good programmer can make a similar programs as Napster or Soribada easily,” and “in this case, speed and design functions are lower but there is no problem to share files.”

An Internet music broadcasting service ‘Let’s Music’ said, “Before protecting the intellectual rights of the music industry and singers, a research about P2P must be preceded. It says that, before fighting with the users, the music industry should △search for talented obscure singers, △ induce to create mania group of unpopular genre, △check out the good functions of P2P services such as the lead of music files to sell music albums, and attempt to diversify the business models.

Seong-Yub Ra cpu@donga.com