South Korea new rules for music | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: Something interesting. This showed up on Music Business Worldwide dot com,

0:03 Speaker 1: one of my favorite sites for music industry news. This

0:06 Speaker 1: is something that I do not believe would work in

0:08 Speaker 1: the United States, but and I don't know if it

0:11 Speaker 1: will necessarily work there either, But South Korea. Something interesting

0:15 Speaker 1: they're doing there. South Korea. Bill would require music distributors

0:20 Speaker 1: to screen tracks for content harmful to minors before release.

0:25 Speaker 1: And again, this is something that would not work here,

0:27 Speaker 1: which is part of why for a number of reasons,

0:30 Speaker 1: which is part of why I find this so interesting

0:32 Speaker 1: that they're doing this. But and this is the first

0:35 Speaker 1: I've heard of this. I didn't even get a chance

0:36 Speaker 1: to preread this, but let's look at this quickly. It

0:39 Speaker 1: says lawmakers in South Korea have introduced a bill that

0:42 Speaker 1: would require music distributors to screen tracks for content harmful

0:45 Speaker 1: to minors before those tracks are released. The amendment to

0:50 Speaker 1: the country's Music Industry Promotion Act was filed on Monday,

0:54 Speaker 1: July sixth by Representative Kim Huen of the ruling Democratic

0:59 Speaker 1: Party of Career, alongside nine co sponsors, lodged with the

1:04 Speaker 1: National Assembly as Bill Number two two one nine seven

1:07 Speaker 1: seventy five. It would require distributors to check whether a

1:11 Speaker 1: recording is harmful to youth before release. Applying the review

1:15 Speaker 1: criteria to the country's Youth Protection Act. Oh, what could

1:18 Speaker 1: go wrong? And again this is something that would not

1:22 Speaker 1: work here for several reasons. Continuing on with the article,

1:25 Speaker 1: if a track is judged harmful and its creator is

1:30 Speaker 1: under nineteen, the distributor must block it from release. An

1:34 Speaker 1: adult creator would instead be notified that the track may

1:38 Speaker 1: be designated harmful to youth, restricting it to adult listeners.

1:42 Speaker 1: According to the Korea Times, South Korean arts outlet News

1:48 Speaker 1: Art News Art that's the name of the publication examine

1:52 Speaker 1: the bill as filed with the National Assembly and reported

1:55 Speaker 1: that it carries no criminal penalties. Distributors that breached the

1:58 Speaker 1: screening rule would instill dead face corrective orders or warnings

2:02 Speaker 1: from local governments. Corrective orders that sounds ominous. Under the

2:06 Speaker 1: current system, the Youth Protection Committee under the Ministry of

2:11 Speaker 1: Gender Equality and Family reviews songs after release and bars

2:15 Speaker 1: miners from those it designates harmful. That designation can take

2:20 Speaker 1: weeks or months. The bills backers say leave in a

2:23 Speaker 1: window and which a track can spread online before any

2:26 Speaker 1: Youth Protection Committee ruling. Kim has cast a measure as

2:30 Speaker 1: a response to hateful and crime glorifying content spreading through music.

2:36 Speaker 1: Quote artistic. This is from Kim. Artistic freedom must be respected,

2:44 Speaker 1: but we cannot stand by and do nothing while hate

2:47 Speaker 1: or crime promoting songs are distributed online freely, harming peer communities, classrooms,

2:52 Speaker 1: and ultimately society as a whole. Because culture and the

2:55 Speaker 1: arts are the spiritual assets of society, any attempt to

2:58 Speaker 1: abuse them as a means of spreading hate speech must

3:02 Speaker 1: be corrected. Unquote. An aid to Kim told The Korea

3:06 Speaker 1: Times that the bill was partly prompted by a recent

3:10 Speaker 1: case involving Incheon Middle school students who released a track

3:15 Speaker 1: filled with violent, hateful expressions towards peers, which then circulated

3:20 Speaker 1: widely across music platforms. Oh that's interesting. I've never seen

3:24 Speaker 1: anything like that happen in the US. Not that it,

3:28 Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it hasn't. I just don't know. But

3:30 Speaker 1: the bill has drawn sharp criticism from within South Korea's

3:33 Speaker 1: music community. Rapper E Sends was among those pushing back

3:36 Speaker 1: on social media. Quote, you shouldn't bring censorship back. Who

3:40 Speaker 1: sets the standards and who gets to decide if a

3:42 Speaker 1: particular song is uncomfortable to listen to, isn't it enough

3:45 Speaker 1: for that person to simply choose not to consume it? Unquote,

3:51 Speaker 1: That would be my argument. A coalition of ten cultural

3:53 Speaker 1: and arts groups has voiced similar concerns. Culture and arts

3:59 Speaker 1: workers a solidarity set in a statement quote, the bill's

4:02 Speaker 1: reference to music that is likely to cause clear and

4:05 Speaker 1: serious harm to youth doesn't provide any concrete criteria which

4:09 Speaker 1: would allow subjective judgments of what is harmful unquote right,

4:14 Speaker 1: and that's the immediate problem you're going to run into,

4:24 Speaker 1: they went on to say, in a statement quote, the

4:26 Speaker 1: idea that strong censorship can prevent hate is nothing more

4:30 Speaker 1: than a fallacy. If this law is underlying logic were correct,

4:34 Speaker 1: then discrimination and hatred should have disappeared under the authoritarian

4:37 Speaker 1: regimes of Park Chung Lee and tuned out one when

4:42 Speaker 1: censorship was at its most powerful in modern Korean history. Unquote,

4:46 Speaker 1: I apologize if I butchered those names. Um, so there's

4:52 Speaker 1: more to this. We don't really have time to go

4:54 Speaker 1: through the entire article, but I would tend to say,

4:57 Speaker 1: I mean if something and maybe there is something like

5:00 Speaker 1: this that has been introduced in the United States and

5:02 Speaker 1: just didn't get very far. I don't know, but I

5:05 Speaker 1: guess I would say, you know, again, the obvious problem is,

5:11 Speaker 1: you know, it is it is subjective, and in the

5:14 Speaker 1: United States it wouldn't work too in the sense that

5:16 Speaker 1: you would have you know, everyone would be going nuts about,

5:19 Speaker 1: you know, the First Amendment. But also, you know, in

5:26 Speaker 1: the United States, these platforms, and this is something we

5:29 Speaker 1: talk about a lot on the show, these platforms, any

5:34 Speaker 1: any platform that distributes music, you know, they can they

5:38 Speaker 1: can police that themselves. They can make decisions themselves, and

5:42 Speaker 1: you know, and they may they may make those decisions

5:45 Speaker 1: as a result of public pressure, but they are able

5:49 Speaker 1: to make decisions and police themselves in terms of what

5:51 Speaker 1: is and is not permissible on their platforms. So the

5:54 Speaker 1: example used in the article of what happened in South

5:56 Speaker 1: Korea with these these kids at the school who made

5:59 Speaker 1: this apparently horrible, hate filled track, you know, Spotify can say, well,

6:05 Speaker 1: we're not going to allow that on our platform. Again,

6:10 Speaker 1: I'm talking about in the United States, dist ro Kid.

6:13 Speaker 1: You know, if they signed up for a distro Kid account,

6:16 Speaker 1: distro Kid can say we're not going to distribute this song.

6:19 Speaker 1: You know, this is not Okay, YouTube would would probably

6:23 Speaker 1: ban it, somebody would report it, it would get removed. So

6:26 Speaker 1: I'm just saying I don't think that would work here,

6:29 Speaker 1: and I'm very skeptical that it is going to work

6:32 Speaker 1: there