G.A. Viray
SM Entertainment finally released a statement regarding the Philippines’ Department of Health (DOH) video advertisement on anti-teen pregnancy on December 8, through No Cut News and My Daily as reported by All K Pop. The said video, according to its viewers was a plagiarized version of f(x)smtown’s “Rum Pum Pum Pum”.
Musical Plagiarism, according to Wikipedia, is
the use or close imitation of another author’s music while representing it as one’s own original work, which could either be in the form of using a musical idea like melody or motif, or in the form of sampling (taking a portion of one sound and reusing it in a different song).
From a previous article on The Dailypedia, the Philippines’ Department of Health (DOH) released an anti-teen pregnancy video on November 30 which had a similar melody to f(x) sm town’s “Rum Pum Pum Pum”. The video was taken down by DOH a few hours after netizens gave negative comments on the said video. People described the video to have an unclear message, inappropriate language, and discriminating to teenage parents. Many netizens also noticed that the video lacked originality as it used f(x)smtown’s melody.
A week after the video made headlines on the internet, here is what a representative from SM Entertainment said on DOH’s anti-teen pregnancy video, as quoted from All K Pop:
By no means have we permitted the use of the music, ‘Rum Pum Pum Pum.’ The original publisher of ‘Rum Pum Pum Pum’ confirmed that the music used by the Philippines’ public service campaign in question is indeed plagiarism, so we already started taking action.
Whatever form of action SM Entertainment is taking, DOH will surely be again on the hotseat after SM Entertainment have released their statement. The public is also expecting a response from DOH Undersecretary Janette Garin who also appeared at the end of the video. However, no official statements from the DOH regarding this issue have been released yet as of writing.
Compare the two videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRiOASRmZFo
It’s ‘f(x)’, not ‘f(x)smtown’ (wtf?). It doesn’t hurt to make a google search about them for just a few seconds..