[Alpha Biz= Reporter Kim Minyoung] Webtoon service providers have been criticized by the Fair Trade Commission for operating unfair terms and conditions that effectively monopolize the right to make webtoons into movies and dramas.
The FTC announced on the 21st that after reviewing serial contracts of 26 webtoon service providers, including Naver Webtoon and NCsoft, it found that seven operators had applied five types of unfair terms and conditions to writers and took corrective action.
There are seven companies in question, including Naver Webtoon, nexture Korea, Lezhin Entertainment, Mudeworks, Seoul Media Comics, NCsoft and Tomix.
According to the Fair Trade Commission, Naver Webtoons and others set up to include "the right to write secondary works" in the contract when signing a contract for publishing webtoon contents. Secondary works refer to the right to translate, adapt, or transform original works into secondary contents such as dramas and movies. The FTC saw this as a violation of the copyright law, which stipulates that "the subject of the right to write secondary works is the author."
The seven operators, who were pointed out by the Fair Trade Commission as unfair terms and conditions, later deleted the terms or revised their expressions in a clear way.
알파경제 Kim Minyoung (kimmy@alphabiz.co.kr)
