Recently, freedom of expression on the web has been anything but free. As government policies on the Internet, such as the Internet Content Rating System and the Ban Against On-line Demonstrations are carried out, it seems that the Internet is moving in the opposite direction of real democracy and freedom. Therefore, the verdict of the Seoul District Court to cancel POSCO’s application for an injunction against the Anti-POSCO Website is like a welcome rain during a dry season for the Information & Communication movement.
POSCO, a corporation that took over Sammi Special Steel Company and in the process fired hundreds of workers, has ignored the order of the local and central labor relations committee (1997), and the verdict of the Seoul High Court (1998), which demanded that they “reinstate the Sammi workers.” For five years the fired worker have struggled nationwide on the streets with tears and sweat against POSCO in an effort to regain their jobs.
Members of the National Assembly, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and other organizations have officially protested against POSCO’s policy, but POSCO has ignored them. Therefore, the Sammi Workers launched the Anti-POSCO parody web-site (http://antiposco.nodong.net), both in Korean and English. Using this site, they publicized their campaign and POSCO’s labor violations throughout the world. In response, POSCO tried to stop this site by using legal action – Korea’s Intellectual Property Rights Act. POSCO claimed that the Anti-POSCO website violated their intellectual property rights because it borrowed design elements from POSCO’s homepage.
Last year, on April 17, Judge Lee Sun-hee from the Seoul District Court announced that she partly agreed with POSCO’s claim and made a provisional disposition that the images borrowed from POSCO’s homepage should not be used. This decision made many international progressive activists very angry. National and international protest movements quickly arose against this decision. In particular, Richard Stallman (GNU/Linux), JCA-NET (a Japanese progressive group), APC (Association for Progressive Communications) and others took protest actions against POSCO’s actions by establishing mirror sites of the Anti-POSCO web-site on their servers.
Finally, on May 23, 2001, the Seoul District Court canceled last year’s provisional disposition. This affair shows that freedom of expression on the web has priority over Intellectual Property Rights. Nowadays, the haves are trying to limit freedom of expression, as expressed in parody sites, by using legal action claiming defamation of character.
This decision reminds us of the importance of freedom of expression. The Sammi Workers struggle for obtaining their jobs and union rights is awaiting the final verdict from the Supreme Court on July 27, 2001. We hope that the verdict from the Court will not fall short of our expectations of Justice.
2001-08-25
