Flip the Media
  • Home
  • Art & Design
  • Business
  • Career
  • Culture
  • Seattle Tech
  • Social Media
  • Technology
Uncategorized 6

Free speech and cyber violence

By Pei-chieh Chen · On May 2, 2009

Cyber violence is a serious problem in South Korea. Nearly 200,000 cases were reported in 2007, which is 50% increased than in 2006. Several celebrities committed suicides because they were too depressed about the serious criticism on the Internet. For example, Choi, a 39-year-old actress, was a national sweetheart in South Korea. Bloggers criticized her about her personal life, loan scandals and divorce.  She suffered from depression and ended her life in 2008. The government in South Korea has enforced the real-name verification law this year to prevent irresponsible messages. From April 1st, 2009, websites which have 100,000 unique visitors per day have to verify users’ identify before they post any content on the websites.

South Korea tried to promote the real-name verification in 2003 for the first time. It was postponed because of the huge opposition from the public. Then in 2005, an event brought the issue back to the society. A female’s photo was posted online because that she didn’t clean her dog’s excretion on the subway and her attitude was very rude. Then people started to search her personal information and disclose it online. Some people visited her personal blog to criticize her and recognized her on the street according to the online photos. The female’s privacy was damaged and the police couldn’t do anything because they can’t follow the violators without their real names. The incident showed the influence of cyber attacks. Not only the celebrities, everyone could be a victim easily. The government reconsidered to enforce the real-name system. Survey showed that there are 80% people agree with the policy on Yahoo Korea and 65% on the Naver.com.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) began to test the real-name verification system on two major websites in 2007, Naver and Daum. On April 1st, 2009, the law was expanded into websites which have 100,000 unique visitors per day. YouTube refused to follow the law and disable Korean users to upload videos and leave comments. The announcement on the official blog claims that, “We have a bias in favor of people’s right to free expression in everything we do. We are driven by a belief that more information generally means more choice, more freedom, and ultimately more power for the individual. We believe that it is important for free expression that people have the right to remain anonymous, if they choose.”

Without the freedom of speech on the Internet, the online world won’t be so active. The Internet helps people to create their niche group and develop a diverse faces of their lives. The real-name verification system might be a policy to turn the society back to a uniform one. Besides, the system is only applied with major websites which reach a certain numbers of visitors. So what about the minor websites? People still are able to spread negative messages on a variety of websites. Are these messages could not be defined as cyber violence?

In addition to using real-name verification system, I believe that there are other methods to regulate inappropriate content. For example, inappropriate content could be reported by users or regulated by administrators. Educating web users to respect the privacy and defamation is also important. People has the rights to speak, they also have to respect others to keep the freedom.

South Korea is the first country to deal with the critical issue. The effectiveness of real-name verification will be researched and observed continuously. We still need more discussion about how governments can keep the freedom of speech and avoid more slanderous messages in the digital world.

Related Posts

Malicious Internet Warriors Dodge Real-Name System

South Korea and the country settings to upload feature is limited to voluntary

Korea’s real name system

Choi suicide sparks debate about Internet slander law

Korean Star’s Suicide Reignites Debate on Web Regulation

News
Share Tweet

Pei-chieh Chen

You Might Also Like

  • Human Rights

    Standing up for Diversity: A Story of Seattle in Protest

  • Culture

    Meet Me at the Bamboo Table: A Panel on the Interplay of Food, Culture and Community

  • Reviews

    What the Cr(app)? LeftoverSwap

6 Comments

  • Helen P says: May 3, 2009 at 8:12 pm

    It’s interesting: the point of transparency is to foster openness and honesty, but complete transparency leads to self-censorship, thus defeating the purpose.

    Reply
  • Pei-chieh says: May 14, 2009 at 11:45 am

    yes, so the problem seems so difficult to be solved.

    Reply
  • Yenching Liu says: May 21, 2009 at 4:47 pm

    I like your argument. The debate on transparency is interesting. Celebrities are easy to become the victims of Cyber Violence. The real-name verification is a way to prevent it, but it can be hard to be applied to other countries.

    Reply
  • Pei-chieh says: May 27, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    To Yenching,

    right. I’m sure that executing the real-name verification will be more difficult in the US and Taiwan.

    Reply
  • gangstalking says: October 3, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    For people who think this is unique to China it’s not. In Korea it’s called cyber violence and a similar case happened in America. Just google the term Gang Stalking and you will see that this is not all that unique to China.

    This is not the exact same as Gang Stalking, but the events that happen once the harassment get started work the same. We are having our fellow citizens spy on each other, and meet out justice, justice that they are not fit to meet out.

    Reply
  • www.gangstalking.info says: January 30, 2014 at 7:42 pm

    Greetings! Very helpful advice within this article! It’s the little changes that will make the biggest changes. Many thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  • Leave a reply Cancel reply

    Subscribe & Follow

    Follow @flipthemedia
    Follow on Instagram
    Follow on rss

    CommLead on Social

    Tweets about commlead

    Related posts:

    Lessig Provides More Legitimacy to the Netroots First Click free Everybody can be a journalist How to save newspapers: one five letter word YouTweetFace Online Media Democracy Is Still Under Construction, or Why Engadget Had to Flip the Switch on Comments
    • Contact
    • About
    • Team
    • Get Involved
    • Privacy
    • Terms

    Search

    Subscribe

    Powered by

    Communication Leadership Logo
    University of Washington, Department of Communication

    © 2014 Flip the Media | All rights reserved.