Before writing this post, I did a lot of searching, and even called the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) to ask whether there would be any problem if I uploaded mock exam questions to my blog.
So today I’m going to write down a few things I learned.
1. CSAT and mock exam copyright
First, the copyright for the CSAT and mock exams belongs to the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation.
It is said that each mock exam or CSAT question costs about 10 million KRW to produce, which means the cost of creating a single mock exam is enormous.
In any case, without KICE’s permission you cannot reproduce, distribute, or publish the questions, but there is no problem if they are used for non-profit purposes.
2. KICE’s stance
If you look at the ‘Questions and Answers’ section on the KICE website, you’ll see there are a lot of inquiries about copyright.
The administrator’s reply is always the same: use is permitted if it is for non-profit purposes.
Then where exactly is the line between commercial use and non-profit use?
Let’s take a blog as an example.
1) When I post my mock exam solutions on my blog, the students who come to read them do not pay me any money. In this respect, posting mock exam questions on a blog is a non-profit use.
2) If students see ads on my blog, Google AdSense will provide me with a certain amount of compensation. From this angle, running the blog can also be seen as having a commercial aspect.So, torn between commercial and non-profit use, I ended up calling KICE.
Me: I want to post mock exam questions together with my solutions on my blog, but I also display Google AdSense ads there. In this case, can posting mock exam solutions be considered non-profit use?
Staff: There are too many possible cases and the ways of using them are too diverse, so KICE does not make determinations on whether a particular act is non-profit or commercial. What we can say is only that non-profit use is allowed.KICE does not decide which acts are non-profit and which are commercial.
So the issue now shifts to what exactly counts as a commercial activity and what counts as a non-profit activity.
3. Commercial activities and non-profit activities
Commercial activity (영리활동) is an administrative law concept referring to an activity conducted to secure profit, separate from the direct pursuit of public administrative purposes by the state.
For private individuals, commercial activity is effectively the same as business (for-profit) activity.
The answer to the following inquiry explains in detail how a government agency views commercial (business) activity.
Two points here are worth noting.
The term ‘commercial (for-profit)’ here is not strictly limited to monetary aspects; it is closer to the meaning that you must not receive any consideration (any kind of benefit).
If you indicate the source, state that the work is a public work subject to free use under Type 4, and only post the video’s URL as a link, then the public can recognize it as a public work provided free of charge, and if there is no provision of consideration as a result, it can be interpreted as not falling under commercial use.
# For reference, the meaning of “consideration” (반대 급부) is as follows.
1. A benefit that corresponds to a certain act. A price or compensation.
2. (Law) In a bilateral contract, the counter-performance given by one party in return for the other party’s performance. For example, payment of the price corresponding to the transfer of goods.Exactly.
If you indicate the source, state that it is a public work subject to free use, and there is no consideration, then you can fall outside the scope of ‘commercial (for-profit) use’.
From this perspective, posting mock exam or CSAT questions on a blog can be interpreted in two ways.
1) As for-profit use
- If simply posting mock exam or CSAT questions causes people to visit the blog and this can generate profit, it may fall under for-profit use.
2) As non-profit use
- Even if people view the mock exam or CSAT questions, they do not actually pay any consideration for them.
- Google AdSense ads do not appear according to the blogger’s intention and the ads are not directly related to the mock exams, so there is no specific consideration that the blogger obtains by posting the mock exams.
- It is hard to say that Google AdSense revenue is directly linked to the act of posting mock exam or CSAT questions, because not all AdSense income arises from posting those questions.4. KICE’s exercise of copyright
In the end, the club of copyright is in KICE’s hands, but the question is whether KICE actually swings that club.
There has been a case where a public official was prosecuted in relation to mock exam copyright, and it went as follows.
1) The key point is that a public official ran a site where mock exam questions were shared, and encouraged users to upload mock exams through a points system, and sold mock exam questions and answer sheets for 4,600 KRW.
2) This is an article about the widely sold CSAT past-question books that are in fact violating copyright law.
3) KICE has prohibited academies from using CSAT past questions.
All of the above cases involve situations where mock exam or CSAT questions were reproduced and distributed and direct profit was obtained. There has not yet been a case where KICE has taken issue with mock exam or CSAT questions being posted on blogs or other sites.
This seems to be because KICE is very passive in exercising its copyright.
KICE is an institution that creates questions in accordance with the curriculum; it is not an institution that exists to profit from question copyrights and file lawsuits.
5. Conclusion
This is the conclusion we want.
Is posting mock exam questions on a blog a violation of copyright?
Probably, if you indicate the source, state that it is a public work that is subject to free use, and do not receive any consideration from visitors, there will be no problem.
It also seems unlikely that simply posting the questions would cause problems even if your blog has AdSense.
And even KICE itself, which holds the copyright, does not clearly specify what constitutes commercial use, and this can be seen as a passive stance toward exercising copyright.
However, since there are no precedents or cases regarding the act of posting mock exam questions on blogs, this can be a kind of “risk” for the blogger.
Therefore, if you want to post mock exams on your blog, I recommend that you stay sensitive to issues related to this topic and manage your posts continuously.
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