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The Korea Communications Standards Commission has ordered Internet portal Daum, which served as a forum to orchestrate and incite people to intimidate and sabotage newspaper advertisers, to delete related posts on its discussion and debate sites. Daum will have to delete all writings on its sites that instruct people to call and threaten businesses about running ads in the major conservative dailies -- the Chosun Ilbo chief among them -- and that list company phone numbers, corporate organization charts, homepage information, and tips on making the threatening phone calls. The KCSC said those writings incited people to acts that are illegal under Korea¡¯s information and communications ethics regulations, thereby harming law and order and infringing on the rights of others.
It is a proper decision. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the celebrated U.S. Supreme Court judge, clearly summed up the limits of personal freedom by saying the right to swing one¡¯s fist ends in front of another person¡¯s nose. The U.S. guarantees the freedom of expression for individuals and groups. But an obvious prerequisite is that this does not infringe on the rights and benefits of others. The decision by the KCSC reconfirms that illegal acts cannot have the protection guaranteed to freedom of expression.
Over the past month, some people have been attacking companies that advertise in the Chosun, Dong-A and JoongAng dailies by jamming their switchboards with phone calls to intimidate them into pulling their ads, causing business operations to grind to a halt. The family of one employee in such a company received death threats after he said that being ordered to pull ads from major dailies was like telling a company to stop doing business. There were also sabotage tactics, where large groups of people would make reservations for travel packages or mobile phone services and then cancel them at the last minute. And the Agora debate forum on Daum served as the forum to incite these illegal acts.
But Daum turned a blind eye to these posts and ended up complicit, failing to live up even to its own rules, which forbid swearing and slander on these sites. When advertisers started asking Daum to delete the posts, the portal turned to the KCSC, avoiding responsibility while the matter dragged on. While the KCSC was deliberating, intimidating phone calls intensified, and affected businesses saw losses snowball. Some groups and news media even hailed these crimes as lawful consumer activism harnessing the new media. We must ask Daum what it hoped to gain by allowing itself to serve as the playground of cyber terrorists. It remains uncertain whether it will persist in its error and just put the blame on the people who posted the writings in question.
Looking at the intimidation and sabotage, it became clear that Internet portals can no longer be allowed to police Internet violence and cyber terror at their discretion. They have now been told they have greater legal obligations in their capacity as distributors of information. Prosecutors must track down those who incited the attacks and punish them.
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