Cyberviolence in Korea
Here in Seoul I stumbled upon the story of TV star Jeong Da-Bin and pop singer Yuni who reportedly committed suicide earlier this year after suffering cyberbullying. This country, the most wired in the world, has already been through the Kathy Sierra/Code of conduct debate and as a result is now considering radical measures like banning anonymous comments from all website (how?) and forcing a true identity system behind every online account.
In South Korea, a law aimed at cracking down on Internet misuse means cyberbullies will no longer be able to hide behind false identities, South Korea’s ministry of information said this month.When the new law takes effect in July, the “Internet real-name system” will mean cyberbullies can be traced because major portals and news media websites will be compelled to record the real IDs of users when they post entries.
Portal operators will be obliged to disclose personal information such as names and addresses of cyber attackers when their victims want to sue them for libel or infringement upon privacy.
This sparks a lot of questions (central ID system, freedom of speech, etc…), and beyond a set of official measures what is needed is an evolution of our society’ etiquette (as usual lagging behind innovation), new ethical standards (the limits of what is tolerable will surely be pushed) and more maturity on the victim side (easier said than done, but ignorance is 99% of the time the right answer).
It would be interesting to pick up the brain of members of the english royal family on this. These guys probably have as thick a skin as anybody, and a few tricks to avoid sleepless nights over personal details publication.
More on this:
• ‘Cyberviolence’ Plagues South Korea
• “Dan Gillmor: there appears to be a correlation between willingness to stand behind one’s own words and the overall quality of what’s said”, bringing ID will increase the quality of content?
