Illegal video streaming site noonoo TV announced Thursday that it would delete all Korean content from its site, following a police investigation launched by the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency on March 16.

Through a notice on its site titled “Information on deleting all materials of domestic television and original series” (translated), noonoo TV said that it “plans to collectively delete all videos related to Korean content that have recently become an issue.”

The videos were specified as content on streaming platforms such as Wavve, Coupang Play, Watcha, Tving and all other Korean original series.

“We plan to delete all data related to domestic content within this week,” read the notice from noonoo TV. “We will also strengthen copyright protection for domestic content and apply filtering.”

There was no mention of deleting content from overseas streaming services such as that of Netflix, Disney+ and more.

Previously, noonoo TV, which opened in 2021, became controversial as it streamed domestic and foreign content from paid streaming platforms for free as soon as the content was released. noonoo TV reportedly has servers in the Dominican Republic.

The Alliance for Protection of Videogram (AVP) — formed by Korean broadcasting companies, streaming services, movie producers and distributors in February — announced on March 8 that it had filed a complaint against noonoo TV.

AVP claimed that despite multiple attempts to block access to the site, the illegal streaming service is still in operation after bypassing restrictions and garnering 1.5 billion total views in February 2023 — higher than legal streaming services. The alliance also pointed out that the illegal service is profiting off of illegal gambling site advertisements.

In response, the Ministry of Science and ICT stepped up to directly block the URL, and Rep. Byun Jae-ill of the Democratic Party proposed an amendment to the Information and Communications Network Act to prevent more cases of illegal streaming services such as noonoo TV.

The bill proposed by Rep. Byun requires information and communication service providers of a certain size to take technical measures to block access when they install cache servers. If the bill is passed, cases of changing domains while bypassing content delivery networks with cache servers in Korea can be sanctioned.

“We accept to an extent the damage caused by our services to the domestic content streaming market and will not process data related to domestic streaming content in the future,” noonoo TV said in the notice announcement Thursday.




BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]