-Viewpoint on the Legislation for Communication
Decency
Internet
Rights and Civil Society Movements
Special
Report from PeaceNet in Korea
http://www.peacenet.or.kr/
October,
2000
In Korea,
the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC)
is currently attempting to regulate cyberspace. These
attempts, in part, respond to the real needs of people
and society in general, yet they are also closely related
to seeking the self-interests of the ministry itself.
In last a decade, as Korea's communication infrastructure,
was being built, the MIC could have handled a sizable
sum of the national budget for these huge projects and
become one of the most influential departments within
the government. However, today when information technology
and communication is widely available and used by most
people the status and role of the MIC has sharply changed.
As the electronic communication network becomes integrated
into our daily lives, only the management of the infrastructure
continues to be the routine work of the MIC. For example,
the use of new technology for education has become the
responsibility of the Ministry of Education and electronic
commerce has become the work of the Ministry of Commerce,
Industry and Energy. To make matters worse, cooperation
among the concerned departments is rarely achieved.
When the recent governmental organization reform plan
was suggested, officials at the MIC must have been shocked
to find that the MIC was removed from the list of government
departments.
Last
month, the MIC announced this plan for revising the
existing "Law for Promoting the use of the information
and communication network.", that has been coined
"Law for Imposing Order in Cyberspace" by
NGOs due to its clearly bad intentions. The total number
of provisions in the this revised bill totals nearly
three times the provisions in the present law. The new
provisions specify three fields in which the MIC wil
play a role: the protection of privacy, content regulation,
and the management of Internet domain names. Since the
public hearing of this revised bill on July 20, over
thirty or more NGOs have strongly denounced this bill
because it could lead the MIC to censor cyberspace
and to infringe on the basic rights of free speech of
netizens. Many cyber-communities and individuals voiced
their fierce opposition to the bill in various ways
- some have written down their messages repeatedly on
the bulletin board of the MIC homepage and other people
had excercised a virtual sit-in on a planned date and
time by repeatedly pressing their browser's reload button
while visiting the MIC website. Once, when the MIC web
server temporarily crushed, and it blamed the accident
on this online demonstration activity and charged the
protestors with disturbance of governmental official
activities. However, after investigation, the cause
was confirmed to be the fault of the equipment in the
MIC server system.
In the
midst of debates, of the most discussed issue was the
rating system. The MIC has argued that they devised
the autonomous rating system, but according to this
bill if there is content to harmful minors, which is
to be judged by a subsidiary organization of the authority,
they can enforce a particular rating level to the site
as part of their legal duty. And this duty could
be applied to any kind of information source over all
server systems within Korea regardless of whether they
are for commercial or noncommercial or individual purposes.
Thus, it is undoubtably censorship over cyberspace.
However, if applied it will be ineffective, because
it cannot touch information sources located out side
of Korea. And if harmful sites targeting Koreans want
to continue to operate, they will move their server
to a foreign country so as to escape legal sanctions
within Korea.
In addition,
Some revised provisions of the bill, especially concerning
privacy protection, are favourable to business groups'
interests rather than consumers' interests. For example,
the revisions ease the rigid conditions of the present
law concerning the transfer of personal information
during merges and acquisitions, and maintains the continuous
usability of the collected personal information even
after the original purpose of the collection has already
been completed. Moreover, this bill gives the authority
to manage the Korean internet domain name (.KR) to the
Ministry of Information and Communication, and establishes
the dispute arbitration committee as a legal body. This
structure of internet governance is very unique in the
world and upsets the present civic decision making process
within KRNIC. In recent days, the MIC has additionally
suggested a bill to protect the public communication
infrastructure by it prohibiting a certain pattern of
online demonstration - the action of repeatedly pressing
the reload button of web browsers while visiting a certain
site. The MIC believes that this behavior threatens
the security of public facilities. However, this behavior
is a very well-known online action and example of free
speech in cyberspace.
Most
of these issues are very new and strange to the general
population. Even in civil society groups, these issues
are only now emerging. There are still many different
perspectives and opinions on these issues among NGOs.
Many of these civic groups don't know the characteristics
of these new issues nor how to deal with them. Considering
this environment, the government's strong drive to regulate
cyberspace is quite reckless. Online communities, who
have not yet had any relations with the existing NGOs,
responded voluntarily to this drive, which in turn stimulated
NGOs to take concrete initiatives against the government's
actions. However, how to regulate or deregulate cyberspace
requires to the convergence of public opinion from diverse
social groups. It means that the present NGOs should
not simply cooperate with online communities but also
promote the awakening of these new issues within civil
society. Now, the most urgent task is obviously to oppose
these proposed bills but in the long term, civil society
groups should form a network so that new, emerging challenges
can be seriously discussed and converge a variety of
opinions can be gathered on those issues within our
society. Cyberspace is rapidly emerging as a new world
for by civil society movements.
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