For Whom is The Legislation for Communication Decency ?

What was happening in this office? It may be the beginning of the movement of government control even over our cyber life. This happening began on July, 12th when the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) reported a legislation for Communication Decency at a strategy meeting for information. As soon as this bill was announced , civic groups ,including Jinbo Network posted messages opposing the bill on the bulletin board of the ministry’s homepage. Due to this, the homepage came to a standstill because of too many people trying to get connected to the site at the same time. After that , the ministry suspected Jinbo Network for the standstill and asked for the police to investigate.

So what on earth is the ‘Legislation for Communication Decency’? It was made by the ministry with search bodies from last March and its purpose is to protect teen-agers from harmful contents on the Internet. The main contents of this bill is a net ratings system.The net ratings system devide the contents into 5 ratings based on 9 categories. Then Internet enterprisers will decide the rating themselves on their contents and indicate it. After this, teen-agers will see the ratings and judge whether they may have access or not.

A lot of civic groups and academic circles are protesting against it because they think the bill has many problems. First of all , this bill didn’t reflect public opinion. The ministry should have listened to public opinion in the process of making the bill. Basically, they made it by themselves and then, held a public hearing when it should be the oppisite. In addition, they didn’t make clear the specialty and representativeness of the people who made the bill, nor the amount of the power of control centralized in the ministry. According to the bill , MIC will manage all affairs having to do with the Internet : protecting personal information ,supervising users’ responsibility, ratings indication and information network stability, and disputes about the name of domain.

At this point, people are reminding the MIC of their dictatorship which has a great possibility of becoming a system for a censorship. The officials of the ministry said that was self-imposed control. But according to the bill , when the ratings the enterprisers decide on do not fit that of the ministry , they have to change it. In other words, all contents on Internet are to be divided by the ministry. Ultimately, this might reach to a sound criticism against government. Civic groups are concerned with the fact that on-line movements of civic groups,progressive parties and labor groups will be in danger.

Many people doubt the effectiveness of the bill also. The net ratings system is a domestic law. There are an unimagianble number of web sites in the world today and many are being made even at this moment while you read this article. And it is a fact that harmful contents of foreign sites are much more than that of domestic sites. This proves to us that it is difficult to find true meaning in the bill.

It is impossible also in the aspect of technology . In accordance with the bill, machines will initially judge the propriety of pictures and literature. Having to do with this, experts say that we do not have technology that is advanced enough to distinguish such things and even if we did have the technology, it is apt to become an indiscreet and inclusive information interceptor.

For these reasons, lots of civic groups are strongly against the bill. They have issued some joint statements. The Jinbo Network and Democratic Labor Party made homepages demanding withdrawl of the bill. They have demonstrated regularly on line and off line. So every Tuesday , the bulletin board of the ministry is full of letters, titled, ” Anti Censorship”. , Chang Yeo-kyoung in Progressive Network stated,”The MIC insists that they made the bill to protect personal information. But the underlying control of MIC is just an act infringing upon Internet users’ rights.”

Although there are many harmful kinds of information in cyber space, they still must not be controled by the government. If they are controlled in this way, it is the same as being under the dictatorship of the military. There are already some commercial rating programs and various groups are groping for rational and self-control ratings system.

Then how have other countries dealt with this kind of issue? In 1997, the US government proposed the Communication Decency Act(CDA) for protecting teen-agers. But soon, the bill came to be unconstitutional by the netizen’s resistances. After that , the government only encourages ratings systems. In China, nowadays, President Jiang Zemin suggested making an international agreement for censorship on the Internet. In England, there are disputes about installing the center for supervising Internet using details at domestic information-gathering machinery. The is a strong movement against this amongst the people of England.

The system seems to be threatening to common people. ” I’m scared to disclose even my name. I participated in the online demonstration. By the way, I received a call from police. I just feel like I’m being suffocated.” one netizen said. “This bill regards all users as a suspected criminal.” said Chang in Jinbo Network.

Due to the people’s resistance , the ministry has deleted some sections of the bill such as, odering deletion on contents and imposing too much responsibility on enterprisers. But the fundamental idea has not changed. The ministry plans to put the proposal to the National Assembly in fall, and if passed, it will be implemented in July next year after a certain period of trial operation.

The government says it is all for the safety of our teen-agers. But how long will the teen-agers be controled? The control just encourages their curiosity to explore inappropriate sites. In an information-oriented society , the thing they really need is not control but education. Let them judge the values of informations and accept them.

If the dominating culture of the 20th century was the TV, the culture dominating 21 century is certainly the Internet. Compared to the former which is normative and passive, the latter is sharable and active. And due to the characteristics of the Internet, as a result, many people can express their thoughts democratically. Therefore, this bill goes against the times.The government had better be cautious and think what truly can protect personal information. Now is the time to attach great importance to freedom not control.

By Paek Su-jung, Reporter