hankyoreh

largely at the request of big companies and National Assembly members.

In a growing number of cases, the provision allowing portal sites to temporarily delete Internet posts accused of being defamatory is being abused by power groups like big business conglomerates and members of the National Assembly.

The Communication Decency Act stipulates that “when it is hard to determine whether an Internet post infringes on the rights of others, or when a fight over its legitimacy is expected,” a portal site may prevent access to the content within a period of 30 days.

Portal sites have been doing just that, temporarily deleting user-posted content when requested to do so by concerned parties, even when they are unable to determine whether or not the material is libelous. The legal provision, therefore, is becoming a blanket of protection for companies and politicians that want to snuffle out criticism and accusations.

A typical example would be the case of someone by the surname of Jeon. On October 9, Jeon wrote a post, complete with pictures, on the Agora section of the portal Daum, critical of Lotteria for, in Jeon’s words, selling her a hamburger that was “very different” from how it had been advertised. Lotteria complained to Daum, which “temporarily deleted” Jeon’s post.

Reacting to this, Jeon filed an “exaggerated advertisement” complaint with the Fair Trade Commission on October 14, and protested on Agora, calling for “fast food stores to stop their exaggerated advertising.” On October 22, Lotteria admitted that the picture in the advertisement in question was “exaggerated,” and said it plans to run a new advertisement.

An official with the competing portal Naver said that while his company asks the Korea Communications Standards Commission “when the matter is sensitive,” Naver “does temporarily delete most of the posts that we get ‘rights infringement reports’ about” from the concerned party.

Naver “permanently deletes” posts when their authors do not request they be re-posted within 30 days. Daum and SK Communications restores posts after 30 days if there are no further challenges to the content in question.

“The idea was to protect people from being victimized by humiliation,” said Lee Eun-u of the law firm Horizon (Jipyeong). “But the same law can, in actuality, be used by people with power as a means to suppress freedom of expression.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]