“Small store ambiance music on streaming is still fair use”

After the lower court decision criticized by Open Net here, the appeals court reversed correctly ruling that ‘for-sale recording’ includes streaming services and therefore the department store must pay neighboring rights fees. However, the court did so by continuing to state in dictum that streaming music is not ‘for-sale recording’ for the purpose of non-revenue fair use at small stores under Article 29 of the Korean Copyright Act, again exposing to copyright liability small stores using streaming service for ambiance music. (The reasoning of this dictum is caused by the previous Starbucks decision where the Korean Supreme Court found compilation CDs not ‘for sale recording’ and therefore not available for fair use.)

Read Korean original here.