Simon and Martina Ask:
What’s up with intellectual property laws in Korea?
What a good question we just asked!
Do they even exist?
I really wanna know about this one.
Whoa, guys.
Whoa.
Now intellectual property might not be the right phrase for this
We’re thinking more along the lines of like
Copyright issues and things along those lines
Because it seems that copyright law and
Intellectual property laws here
Aren’t really strictly
Enforced?
Or perhaps, don’t exist?
Now I know there’s going to be some
Keyboard warriors out there that are gonna say
Of course Korea has copyright laws
They’re going have enforcement of this kind of stuff
Of course it happens
It very may well exist
We just want to say
That we don’t really see enforcement
Or punishment or…
I just really don’t understand how
These things can legally pass.
For example a really long time ago
In Bucheon, we did a video about
Angelina Jolie Bar.
Which is a tiny bar
That’s got pictures of Angelina Jolie
All over it
I’m not necessarily sure
If Angelina Jolie
Was motivated to make a bar in Bucheon
My understanding is that they probably just took that name
And those images without asking her.
And it’s not only in Bucheon
There are shops that have like the Nike logo,
But it’s turned into like a Rhino horn
Yeah its still white but it has an orange background
And you KNOW it’s Nike but
It just has some horns on it
That hagwon bus that drove around that had the
Apple finder logo
And they’re like, ‘Hey it looks nice’
There was also a dentist that wound up
Using that as well,
The exact same one. Oh right
I’ve seen the actual white Apple logo used for places
Coffee shops have the Apple white logo on it
Yep
I mean people should be getting sued
Left right and center for opening up these kind of shops
One of my favorite ones is that
North Face apparel is really popular
Here in Korea
But it’s also a bit expensive
So if you can’t afford the North Face
Why not go for your second best option,
Black Face
I’m not joking
There’s a company that looks just like North Face
But they call themselves [Same font] The Black Face
There’s so much
More in that name
Than you know
And they sell sports clothing as well
A whole another topic for TL;DR and K-Pop artists, and….
Black Face
Take for example, this Chicago F@#%
Hat that I’m wearing
That I bought here in Korea
Ain't that nice
Let me tell you something
IT’S NOT OFFICIAL
It’s a rip-off
Ok so we asked the guy that made the hat
And we contacted the guy afterwards!
And we contacted him and asked him like
I’m really curious!
How did you get the permission to use the logo?
Like did you fees
Because he also uses other logos like
Chanel and like Yves Saint Laurent
And we were like how did you get permission to print this
And he was like
Permission? What do you mean?
What is this permission you speak of?
Why do I have Russian accent now?
I don’t understand
And here’s the thing that I find really surprising about it
And this is where I think the idea of like
‘There could be laws but they’re not enforced’ comes in
I was to make a bar or a coffee shop or a clothing store
In North America
Huh, I’m going to use a Nike checkmark
There’s no way I would even have that thought process
Because I would think to myself
“I could get in real big trouble for that”
Yeah!
Or like how GD and TOP used the Playboy Bunny symbol
For their album cover
If somebody handed me that album cover
I’d be like Uh we can’t use this
We’re going to get sued
That’s gonna cost a lot of money
No. And that’s why GD and TOP
Had to pull their album cover and change it around
Like, these are the processes that go with us
But don’t necessarily seem to be that big of a conversation point
Here in Korea.
I feel like the best way to describe how intellectual property
Is treated here in Korea is pretty much
Come at me bro, I AINT SCURRED
I think the idea is more like
There are small businesses in Korea
What are the odds that
An international company is going to come here to Korea
Hire lawyers
And go through the legal process
I think that they realize
That other companies overseas
It’s too big of a hassle for them to hire lawyers
They do what they want
I remember hearing a lot more about copyright issues before
It seems like as of late
Over the past year or two years
As if Korea is starting to do a little better with intellectual property
I think that now that they’re becoming global
They realize that becoming global is a double-edged sword
On one had they’re like, “Yay people are buying our stuff”
But on the other hand people are like
“We notice that you copied us Samsung”
I would like to retract that past statement that I said
About Samsung
We didn’t mean it
There was no such copying that occurred
Don’t. Cut off… any more of my toes
This is happening to us as well
This is something that we are experiencing.
Especially with the growth of YouTube
We’ve had some experiences in the past
With our intellectual property,
THAT
Really
Frankly
SUCK
Now there are many examples of this having
Happened to us
But recently there’s been one that
Extra ticked us off
There’s a very big
Broadcasting channel in Korea
It’s a Korean broadcasting channel
I’m not gonna name any names, we don’t want to say anything
It’s like a system.
It’s worldwide
It’s not just in Korea. It broadcasts in Korea.
And what ended up happening
Is that they wound up contacting us because
They wanted us to be
Part of their show
So we listened to what they wanted us to do
And it was the typical
You know “Talk about Korean food and
Ooh, is Kimchi spicy
And say how much you love Korean food”
And we’ve done some of those programs a long time ago
We don’t want to them again because
And it’s going to take up like three to four hours of our filming day
And. Yeah,
We just didn’t want to do it!
We’ve done SO many of these programs in the past
It’s kind of boring for us now
So when we wound up telling them specifically
That no, we do not want to be apart of your program
They said, Ok fine
And then they just downloaded a bunch of our videos
And put it on the program instead
Even though we told them that we don’t
Want to be apart of your program!
And this is like a TV show
This is not a non-profit organization
This is a television show where people get paid
Like, they get paid to be actors
The people at the company get paid to edit
They get paid to film stuff
And rather than actually having some kind of business ethic
Where you would say,
“Well, they don’t want to be on the show, they don’t want to film with us,
We probably shouldn’t download their stuff and cover up their logo
With our logo”
Yeah. They just did that anyways.
And they didn’t pay us for it
They didn’t ask us permission for our videos
They just
TOOK IT ALL!
They didn’t even email us to say
“Hey to let you know
Were going to put you on the show is this ok”
They literally just took it
Now we don’t want to make this seem like
This is the Wild West
And everybody’s just stealing everything that they want
There are some changes happening
We would up finding some stuff online
Like Korean law blogs
That there are some cases and there are some settlements
In which the courts are starting to
crack down on this a little bit more
You especially see this with plastic surgery clinics
Because a lot of K-Pop idols
Their faces are being taken and put on the plastic surgery clinics?
Which? How do you?
Look as beautiful as this girl!
And so a lot of celebrities are saying
“Well, I didn’t have plastic surgery done,
How can you use my face to sell your product?”
Don’t misrepresent me that way.
So they’ve been able to sue them
Or been able to get it taken down
Especially a lot of online games as well
Where they’re taking like baseball players’ stats
That kind of thing
And they’re not asking the baseball players’ permission
Yeah, and they’re making money off of it
So I do see a big change happening?
But we still see a lot of things like variety shows
Using 7 to 10 different clips from like foreign songs
And there’s no way you got their permission
We know from people that are in the music industry that
If you want to say license and RGD2 song for example
It will cost you around three to five hundred thousand dollars.
DOLLARS. DOLLARS.
I don’t think that the shows here in Korea are paying that money.
No.
10 songs in one episode, and they’re using like
Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, like, its just not happening. So.
I do think we’re going to see a big shift and change,
We’ve already seen it happening with the K-Pop socks.
This is the saddest example of it all.
Especially for some of you tourists.
Five years ago,
If you go to any subway
You could see a whole bunch of socks with K-Pop Idols on them
Like Big Bang, Super Junior, TVXQ
And they would change for like every album that came out
It was like TOP with black hair
TOP with like the half-shaved head
It was like constantly up to date
You could get a pair for a dollar
You could get six pairs for five dollars
But now as of late,
It’s difficult to find
There’s been a crackdown on K-Pop socks.
I know.
So sad.
I’m guessing the K-Pop companies are like
“How can you sell that without giving us any monies?”
There needs to be like some black market
Like “who wants your kpop socks, kpop socks”
Well that’s, that’s Myeongdong. Yeah!
I think the general message is that
Intellectual property within Korea
Is starting to be defended more
But then it comes to international copyrights
They are still pretty much freely used here it seems
If you are watching, companies that take our stuff,
Try not to crop out our logo.
That’s why we put it there. That’s just rude.
That’s just totally rude! It’s there for a reason!
You know there was an actual poster
Of us outside of a restaurant in Bucheon
For like, because we did a video review
And they put up like screens of that on their,
They didn’t tell us! No one asked us!
We got a text message from our friend being like
“I’m pretty sure your posters are up in front
of a nengmyeon restaurant”
I’m like, “WHAT?”
And I come back from Canada,
And there are like pictures of us everywhere
I’m not just spokesman for this?
Why?
Luckily it’s a great restaurant.
I mean we like it but.
We’re going to talk about this a little more on our blog
So if you want to read more of our thoughts
Make sure you click on the link here and you can see it
I think we should stop talking about it before somebody
Knocks on our front door and then
You see the screenshot of our building from
From the fourth floor
And then we’re like, (breaking glass) sailing out of it
Thankfully we have a camera
So we can see if its like, a crazy guy with gloves
So that’s it for this week’s TL;DR
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As we dodge the police and the legal committee here
For trying to claim our copyright
It’s not like were doing anything wrong..
We’re not doing anything!
We’re trying to put the message out there!
You know what would be nice?
I would have no problem with a lot
Of these places using our stuff
If they said “Hey! Check out this blog Eatyourkimchi.com!” or
“Simon and Martina on YouTube”
But they don’t even mention where you’re from
It’s like these magical clips that appear on their show
And they crop out your logo and they’re like
“There are just these people that are talking about Korea!”
Like, just tell them where it’s from.
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