Government steps back from real-name system

Posted on : 2011-03-08 14:38 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Observers say a full reconsideration of the system may be on the horizon
 March 4. (Photo by Park Jong-shik)
March 4. (Photo by Park Jong-shik)

By Koo Bon-kwon, Senior Staff Writer 

  

After a debate over whether or not to apply the Internet real name system to “social posting” sites, the government has decided against the move. With this decision, observers are predicting that the system will decline into uselessness as the efficacy of the regulations and fairness of their application are rocked at their foundations.

“It was decided that social posting services do not fall into the category of this year’s sites subject to the limited identity confirmation system (Internet real name system) that are to be announced Wednesday,” a Korea Communications Commission (KCC) official told the Hankyoreh on Monday.

In accordance with the Information and Communications Network Act, the KCC applies the real-name system to Internet sites receiving more than 100 thousand visitors per day, requiring anyone who wishes to post there to provide their resident registration number and confirm their real name. The corresponding sites have been announced in February of every year, with application of the system beginning in April.

Critics have called the system a leading example of Internet regulations that suppress South Koreans’ freedom of expression on the web and create a usage environment that differs sharply from international norms. The announcements of the sites subject to the system have drawn objections every year from the companies in question as well as Internet users.

In particular, a controversy over the efficacy and fairness of the regulations arose in April 2009 when Google, the world’s largest portal, responded to the designation of YouTube Korea as a real-name system site in South Korea by restricting bulletin board uploads only for users registered with South Korean nationality, while allowing them to post videos and replies anonymously by going through foreign countries. At the time, the company contended that it could not abandon freedoms of anonymous expression.

In April 2010, Bloter.net, a South Korean online media outlet specializing in information technology, responded to its designation as a real name system site by closing its bulletin board and refusing to participate in the system. “We cannot accept that you can only exercise free expression of opinion after first confirming your real name,” the site said at the time.

In July 2010, three months after shutting down its bulletin board, Bloter.net presented an anonymous bulletin board making use of social networking services such as Twitter, Me2day, and Facebook, offering a “social posting” service that circumvented the real name system. Since then, some 110 sites have introduced similar services, including those of a number of press outlets, public institutions, and politicians, and other specialized social posting service companies have sprung up. The characteristic of social posting is that while there is no need to use real names, communication is encouraged without the presence of malicious posts due to the linkage with the users’ SNS accounts.

With social posting sites using SNS taking the place of bulletin board functions, the KCC has been debating since last year whether to apply the real name system to them. Because these sites essentially function as bulletin boards, not applying the real name system to them opens up a legal means for companies to provide bulletin board services while refusing to follow the real name system, leaving the system as good as merely nominal.

As this decision means that sites currently subject to the system can avoid its application if they change their bulletin boards to a social posting format, observers are saying a full reconsideration of the Internet real-name system appears inevitable.

  

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