By This new law I can see having some scary governmental abuse potential:
South Korea touts itself as one of the most wired and technology savvy countries in the world. But the Lee Myung-bak government’s increasing attempts to monitor the Internet have the blogosphere and Web industry reminded of the cold realities of the real world behind the screen.
The National Assembly passed the new anti-file sharing provision, suggested by the ruling Grand National Party (GNP), following a close vote April 1, despite protests from Internet companies and civil liberties advocates that it could threaten the freedom of expression on the Internet.
Lawmakers also passed another GNP-backed bill that calls for the strengthening of the real-name verification on Web sites, and such developments have critics questioning whether the unpopular Lee government is becoming overzealous in its efforts to avoid another beef crisis.
According to the bulked-up copyright law, the government has the power to shutdown an online message board for a maximum six months after the site is warned for a third time to delete pirated content and prevent its movement.
In addition to the “three-strikes” rule, Internet users who repeatedly upload copyrighted content without permission could lose their Internet accounts. [Korea Times]
So how does this law define copyright infringement you may ask? Well I may be doing it right now by exerpting this Korea Times article:
Defining copyrighted content is also a problem, as the concept not only includes movies, television shows and music, but also the articles of media organizations and even individual blog postings.
This has bloggers concerned, but KCC officials deny the claims that the new copyright law will affect their freedom of expression, pointing out that the provisions are to be imposed only to online message boards with “commercial” intentions.
However, the boundaries are still blurry, since an increasing number of bloggers are going professional to create revenue from their sites, or at least attaching advertisements from Google AdSense and other advertisement services for some pocket change. This means that individual blogs could be subject to the copyright law, as the message boards operated by Internet companies are.
“The law could have the government shutting down not only major Web portals, but online message boards of smaller companies and even `meta sites’ that compile blog posts. And the member blogs of the meta sites could be interpreted as online message boards, too,” said Sogumi, a popular blogger whose writings appear on Tatter Media (tattermedia.com).
This new law comes on the heels of popular Korean blogger Minerva being arrested with prosecutors wanting to send him to jail for 18 months.
8:58 pm on April 16th, 2009 1
Ho-hum. Korea-centric thinking.
Korean websites will just register their site to another person, move them to overseas servers and send all revenue into a foreign account.
Why do they even bother?
5:27 am on May 3rd, 2009 2
This is not the reason we came here for freedom of expression is a fundamental right I am ready to leave now after so long isn’t over 50 years enough. Time to go either they will thrive or not seems to be up to them.
8:18 pm on May 13th, 2009 3
May 13, 2009
Dear Mr. Kim Jong Il, free Laura and Euna
as Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did for Saberi,
The journalist, Roxana Saberi, had been in the Iranian jail since January as she was charged for spying. She is a hopeful young female journalist. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders considered her circumstances very seriously in a humane way. Now she is free to come home. We pray for her health and peace and joy in the family;
Needless to say, our president Mr. Obama and the secretary of the state Mrs. Clinton greatly helped her case as the Iranian leaders understood their concerns. Whole world expressed joy of Saberi’s home coming. More good understandings hopefully would come from the leaders of both nations.
Meantime, we hope that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il too this time take the same line of thought as the Iranian and American leaders had for Ms. Roxana Saberi and free the two American Korean female journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, as spies, jailed now in the cold North Korea.
We understand that Mr. Kim has the same humane fatherly compassion too as these leaders had for this young Saberi who is in the same age group of their children.
Saberi and the American female journalists probably had the same intellectual curiosity and dutiful obligation to inform the world about the true images of the countries they were visiting in order to promote better human understanding among the nations
for a better tomorrow.
We hope that Mr. Kim by now should have much more progressive thought than Mr. Gorbachev had for the declining Soviet Union.
Consider the young American female journalists’ bravery and intellectual vision as well as their love for Koreans in North and South.
See the Korean airmen and navies saved North Korean cargo ship from the pirates’ attack as they had the strong love of Koreans as the same family members at the same time to accomplish their duty as soldiers to keep peace in the international waters. Imagine these brave Koreans did the international duty according to the law. Proud Koreans!!
For there is no borderline in love.
Mr. Kim should understand we have to build a better world according to the ideas of new young generation that should have much more enlightened than those of the now aged leaders’ of the troubled world.
Try to educate the young generation to have a better life than you and we have as we could not have accomplished the dream yet as we dreamed of. You have good chance to show your good will to the world, freeing these two Korean Americans from the cold jail.
If you free them, all Koreans in North and South as well as the American people and the people of the world will admire you as the man of good will. Just free them with your good message to the American leaders too as it is very good opportunity for you to express some of your inner thoughts to them as the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leaders did.
Please free the young Korean American journalists from the cold jail. They are suffered enough for a misunderstanding by your leaders.
God will bless your good deeds.
Sincerely, Chae S. Sone