Suspicion has been raised that a small number of music creators reaped tens of billions of won in copyright revenue through abnormal methods on platforms like YouTube Shorts.

The Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) announced today (October 22) that it is withholding the payment of copyright fees for certain rights holders and conducting additional verification, following allegations of YouTube abusing raised during the parliamentary audit by the National Assembly Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee.

The case involves 4 rights holders and 802 registered tracks.

Copyright fees currently demanded amount to approximately 24 billion won, and when combined with amounts already distributed, the total scale is estimated to exceed 30 billion won.

During the parliamentary audit on October 12, Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Jin Sun-mee pointed out problems with a new monetization method suspected of abusing the system by artificially inducing the use of specific music to generate massive copyright fees.

KOMCA explained, "In the case of some Shorts channels, specific music was used when producing videos, and the music rights holders operated in a way that returned a portion of the received copyright fees to the channels."

It further claimed, "In this process, usage records aimed at generating copyright revenue may have been created, such as using music unrelated to the video content or inserting tracks in a way that they are practically inaudible."

KOMCA expressed concern, stating, "YouTube copyright fees are structured to distribute royalties received from the platform (YouTube) based on the usage performance of each copyrighted work. If the usage volume of a specific track increases artificially and raises its distribution share, the copyright fees returning to other creators could decrease."

Accordingly, KOMCA views this issue as going beyond the problem of copyright fee payments for certain rights holders, reaching into the rights and interests of all music creators and the fairness of distribution.

KOMCA emphasized, "The core of the suspicion is whether the usage performance of specific tracks stemmed from normal music consumption or if it was artificially increased for the purpose of economic compensation."

It added, "However, since additional verification is necessary regarding the appropriateness of the track usage performance, we are checking the operation methods and contractual relationships of the relevant Shorts channels, and sharing related information with overseas copyright organizations as well."

After commissioning an overseas artificial intelligence (AI) music analysis company to examine 791 of the related tracks, KOMCA found that some tracks showed possibilities of being AI-generated, and is therefore also verifying suspicions related to AI generation.

Previously, a KOMCA member filed a complaint with the police against this matter in February on charges of fraud and obstruction of business, but the police decided not to forward the case on June 30 citing insufficient evidence.

KOMCA has requested a review of this investigation.

At a board of directors meeting on September 29, KOMCA determined that additional fact-checking was necessary and decided to maintain the withholding of payments for the copyright fees in question.

A KOMCA official stated, "If they are legitimate copyright fees, they should naturally be paid, but in a situation where serious doubts have been raised regarding the appropriateness of distribution, paying out a massive sum without sufficient verification is also a matter that requires caution."

The official added, "We need to check not only the payment demands of certain rights holders, but also whether the legitimate distribution shares of other creators have been infringed upon."