South Korea has had a three strike policy in place since mid 2009 for file sharing. This policy basically throws individuals off the internet (revokes their access through thier ISP) if they accused of filesharing three times. Over the last 2 years over 60,000 actions have been taken by the government relating to this law and at least 32 individuals have lost their internet access.
2. How Many Individuals or Web Sites Have Been Suspended? The legislation was passed on April 22, 2009 and came into force on July 24, 2009. By the end of July 2010, there has been no suspension against an individual user or a web site by the order of the Minister. However, the Copyright Commission has recommended ISPs to suspend accounts of copyright infringing users in thirty-one cases, and all of the individual users have been disconnected to the corresponding ISPs for less than one month. Recommendations by the Copyright Committee (Source: Report of the Minister to the National Assembly, September 2010)
One of my many problems with this law are the due process concerns, Heesob Nam sums these up well with regard to commission actions:
Unlike the suspension by the Minister’s order, a suspension by the Copyright Commission’ recommendation can be made without requiring that the unauthorized reproduction or transmission takes place at least three times. Nor is required a prior notice. When the Copyright Commission determines the user’s unauthorized activity being repeated, the Commission may recommend the corresponding ISP to suspend the user’s account. In this regard, the suspension by the Commission’s recommendation is neither a three-strike rule nor a notice-suspension system. The Korean government also does not call this a three-strike rule. But the reason is quite different. It is not a three-strike rule because the suspension is a voluntary measure taken by an ISP (See page 7 of APAA Annual Report 2009 (Korea)).
