Slashdot Mirror
Korea Fighting Pseudonyms on the 'Net
ThreeDayMonk writes "According to the Chosun Ilbo, Korean net firms, pushed by the government, are moving to require message board users to use their real names: 'The current regulation that requires those who post messages on government and public organizations' web sites to use their real names is likely to be expanded soon to private portal sites.' The Japanese version of the page has more information. Apparently, citizen ID numbers will be used to verify identity."
But Mr. Puffy Pants IS my real name!
I'm not Korean but I have many friends that are...and whenever I had to signup for as little as gaming sites to play online games with them, I was always required to input a "Korean Registration Number", which is basically a citizen ID. Even if I had nicknames, they could always trace it back to the ID. However, the ID mechanism is pretty well known, and I was able to create a random generator, which is why I guess they now want real names.
How are they going to verify that I don't just pick one of pre-posted IDs and us ethat one ?
It always amazes me how stupid government regulations can be. Do these guys even think for a second before pooping out such a law ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
"Apparently, citizen ID numbers will be used to verify identity." Sounds like Big Brother to me. Would be effective in stopping SPAM though.
My real name is Anonymous Coward. What does this mean for me ??
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
You mean to say Mr. Goatse is hiding behind an alias? I find that hard to believe.
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
So? I don't mind giving my name out on the Internet. There aren't a whole lot of Abe Thurtells out there, so my name is a unique identifier, but I don't care. There's nothing very dangerous about giving it to people.
My address and phone number I keep a little more guarded, but the one thing I really don't post publicly, anywhere, is my e-mail address. Just let me keep that to myself, and I'm happy.
Well, that and obvious things like my social security number and various bank account numbers and personal identification numbers.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
I mean look at slashdot. If people were forced to use their real names then I think that trolling would pretty much be eliminated, and there probably wouldn't even be any need for moderation either. Do you think people would hide goatse.cx links if their posts could be easily traced back to them? Would people still sneak in movie spoilers? Maybe one guy would try it, but then someone would show up at his door with a baseball bat the next day.
Also, forcing people to use real names would eliminate some other big problems. Look at the amazon.com book reviews. Book publishers frequently post dozens of positive reviews for their own books to sell more copies. Forcing the usage of real names would mean that this could only be done once per person. And even then, you could do a little background searching to determine that the guy who said "THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER" was really the author's brother.
Last and most importantly, this would save usenet. Usenet is becoming unusable today due to stupid spam posters, idiot trolls, and crazy psychos looking to start flame wars. You could argue that there is a real need for anonymity online, but I really disagree. The fact of the matter is that Morpheus dies, the Matrix is destroyed, and Neo is revealed to be a program and not a real human at the end of Matrix Revolutions. So to those that disagree with me, I ask you to consider my position carefully.
They won't fight this. There may be a couple of loud voices heard for a minute but Koreans are even more sheeplike than Americans. I don't know if it's a cultural thing or what but Korea's a country where the entire population can have an opinion that opposes the status quo yet nothing will change.
While no one in Korea will run to the streets protesting, this is the internet and the more courageous Koreans (a minority) will stop posting to message boards that reside in country and start using boards put up by Koreans living in the U.S. and other countries.
Note: I'm an American who has lived in Korea (I speak read and write Korean) and I'm not trying to be "inciteful".
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
1. On Internet noone knows you are a dog.
2. Koreans like dog meat.
Make your own conclusion.
I suppose you don't know they've done this several times already
Korea has got a long history of brutal, authoritarian government. Democracy is a very young thing in Korea, and not something the culture is very conducive toward. Koreans on matters tend to be very rightious, extreamly infactic, authoritarian, and prepared to smash whatever gets in the way of completing the task at hand. So don't be surprised the government is behaving this way, even their Buddhist monks have been known to go on riots.
Luckily there is a younger generation that wants the best, so things should sort out for the better in the long term. They've already managed to do alot.
I understand that a lot of liberal slashdotters might find the idea of having everyone post under their real name and number intriguing. However, I would caution them to think out the implementation very clearly.
Any ID scheme by definition requires authentication, and therefore security protocols on an ABI layer (assuming we confine this discussion to computers and message boards). Most open source ABIs are well known and showing their age, the hacker community already knows how to circumvent them. The private ABI's don't fare much better.
So, we've established that there is an achilles' heel with regards to authentication--proving that citizen joe really is citizen joe.
Given that, I can see that any currently available implementations would make it far too easy for unathorized users to forge the ids of legitamate productive citizens.
I think that once we have the bandwidth to allow one-way always-on video streaming from the users' computers, then maybe we can re-visit this idea; but right now is just not the time.
Wow.
Far-reaching implications. First applications I see is government spider programs crawling all over the Korean message boards, looking for anti-social posts, keeping records, tying in data from different forums. The government will have a database of everything you've ever said online. Then, when something not so nice happens, they start querying the database.
SELECT FNAME,LNAME,ID
FROM CITIZEN,FORUMS
WHERE FORUMS.POSTS.CONTENTS contains "bomb" AND FORUMS.POSTS.CONTENTS contains "allah" AND FORUMS.POSTS.ID = CITIZEN.ID
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I'm a Korean-American, but thank God I don't live in Korea.
After a little over 10 years from breaking away from a dictatorship, my people *still* don't understand what freedom truly is.
This is exactly what the founding fathers were doing when they made sure that freedom of speech became a pillar of what made this country. That is what makes this country so great. (Yes, there were a few hiccups, but at least today we can protest against the government and not fear being killed).
What if you wanted to write something against the Korean government? How can you reasonably expect to protest if you didn't have the right to anonymously post your comments? By forcing people to add identification to their posts, the government is trying to break up any attempts for people to anonymous organize for whatever reason.
It sucks, and this is why Korea, or any Asian country will never be a first class country. They don't understand truly what freedom is, and they don't respect the right for people to dislike or even hate you.
Well there is a petition trying to get SCO to sue a bunch of Linux users.
. ht ml
http://www.petitiononline.com/scosueme/petition
but all of this is offtopic.
MY only question, is this north or south korea?
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the UK government trying to create a law that every UK net connection is directly traceable, i.e. every ISP has to bind physical info into your ip alias (i.e. user-postcode.cache.pol.co.uk)?
Actually...that's only a little more detailed than alot of the ISPs IP addresses these days...at least with ISPs with more than one POP. You look at Road Runner...or AOL...or BellSouth...or Verizon...or Comcast...or pretty much any large ISP and you can guess what City they are in or at least reasonably close to. (Admittedly it's much easier to do with Broadband than it is with dialup because of distance restrictions in the ability to get Broadband service)NeoChichiri
http://www.neochichiri.net
The MMORPG Ragnarok Online uses the Korean citizen ID to keep track of who is who, make people accountable for their actions (e.g. cheating), and also to prove ownership of accounts in the event you need them to do something like tell you your password. For this reason, some of those administrative things are not possible/enforceable on the International server.
What this does do is make the punishment for cheating much more severe--you can't simply establish a new account and start cheating again. But it also means Gravity might punish you when you don't think you deserve it, and in a fairly damaging way as far as the online game experience goes. Unfortunately, Gravity has a somewhat totalitarian stance on things: Regulations. I know people have been punished for complaining on the message boards (which are tied to your user account). Some of those regulations are very annoying to abide by due to the game dynamics, e.g. looting and kill-stealing. Others are extremely open to interpretation. I remember having to constantly watch my mouth because I wasn't sure who I would offend by an offhand comment.
Big Brother is watching. And you will learn to like it.
The thousands of slashbots babbling something about "anonymity not being a part of freedom".
;)
Ironic, a post from an AC condemning slashdotters penchant for advocating privacy rights.
The right to privacy IS a fundamental function of a free society, along with the right to peaceably assemble, the freedom to speak your mind and the free press.
I have to question the patriotism--or location-- of someone who would actively condemn us for that.
Unless they're posting AC; in which case they're probably simply going for -1 troll anyways.
I am very afraid of visiting my brother in korea...
Should I use my REAL name to post something on that kind of private websites?
I do not wish to reveal my real identity in the virtual reality(or Virtual UNreality).
Don't you my fellow /.'ers sometimes stay on the web just to get out our present reality?... :(
buffering...
If this is for North Korea, I am not at all surprised, being a communist country and all. South Korea, and I am only midly surprised. Either way, I am sure that they are tired of their fellow countrymen acting like a bunch of stupid white eyed Americans :-P
It if applies to e-mail, that would solve the spam problem. Can you imagine spammers actually attaching their real, verified name to all of their e-mails?
I think I've found a new friend!
slashdot yro pages should just say "yes, just like 1984" across the top in giant letters so that people like you don't have to point it out.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
im going to play devils advocate on this and ask you this question: why is it that asking people to give their real name before posting something is against free speech ? think about it. maybe a society where no one has to hide behind pseudonyms to speak their mind is more "pro-free-speech" than one where people feel the need not to compromise themselves or something by saying their opinion.
They made a wasteland and called it peace.
Tacitus, Roman historian. - 1st century AD
Ironically this was posted by an AC.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
..no more Hot18F_Seoul for you then.
You know who you are.
For all you idiots who'd like to see this measure universally applied, I've got two words for you: Salam Pax. You think he'd have been posting if the only way to do it was with his government ID# attached?
I'm pretty sure he wouldn't, and I'm pretty sure enough of the trolls and spammers would find ways to keep going that we wouldn't miss them.
Because, apart from governmental repercussions, there is peer pressure and societal disapproval for unpopular speech. If you force people to use their real names, you will get much less disagreement. Which is, of course, just what repressive governments like.
think about it. maybe a society where no one has to hide behind pseudonyms to speak their mind is more "pro-free-speech" than one where people feel the need not to compromise themselves or something by saying their opinion.
People have thought about this for a couple of thousand years. Many great works of literature, social criticism, reportage, and political science have been published under pseudonyms. Pseudonyms are essential for free speech.
If you want to get rid of the need for pseudonyms, you have to change human nature (peer pressure, retaliation, flaming, all that) first. Good luck.
But, to each his own I guess.
... "axis of evil" North Korea, or our good buddies South Korea?
1961 and 1979.
You need to do a search for "Kwangju", then think about what you so hastily wrote.
And so ends free speech.
People use pseudonyms so that they can speak freely. So they post something that some nutcase doesn't like, then the nutcase hunts that person down and whacks them.
Or people want to speak out against the government. Which seem to be what the government there wants to put an end to..
Fear the government that fears you..
When the government restricts your right to speak freely on any subject, no matter who it may offend, it is time to abolish that government....
At the slightest sign of a power vacuum or confusion, ol' Puffy Hair would push over the US and South Korean border guards like matchsticks, and tapdance all the(-very- short) way to the South Korean capitol, for his own version of 'reunification'. Resource-starved countries with huge militaries, time has proven over and over, are extremely dangerous.
North Korea is so far into the dark ages, and Kim is so mentally deranged and desperate(the whole "I'VE GOT NUCLEAR WEAPONS, REALLY, I DO!" isn't working so hot for him), that at this point, he'd do anything and everything to get the resources and land South Korea has. It would, without a doubt, start World War III- that country is so armed to the teeth, and its people so completely, totally brainwashed...coalition soldiers would be fighting every man, woman and child strong enough to pick up a shovel or pitchfork. Kim is no Saddam- his people have been completely brainwashed into loving him. It would be a slaughter on both sides.
So, yeah, I think starting a coup in SK would be a really, really, really stupid idea.
Personal liberty and the right to vehemently question one's leadership shouldn't be questioned, regardless of what type of place you live in. If where you live thinks the idea of free speech is "wrong" then you live int he wrong place or the leaders are fucktards.
What are you, Wesley Crusher, with a fresh mouth?
Please help metamoderate.
Sociologically, Asian communities are much more cohesive than Anglo-Saxons are. They don't want to stand out when they are in a group and are not as willing to take risks when the group is against the risk.
Their reactions are based on what is good for the group. Does the national ID system help out the community? Yes it does on a day to day level by weeding out criminals and terrorists. Americans would look at it like, does this help me out? Nope, it violates me in ways only aliens are supposed to and I get no immediate benefit from it.
Actually in many places, its hard to see why we don't coup against our president. He is taking too much away from the collective good and putting it into the individual hands. I don't agree with this but it is interesting.
At least DotComGuy will have nothing to worry about...
If your government really upheld freedom of speech you wouldn't need to speak anonymously. I really hope you aren't a US citizen talking about "vehemently question[ing] one's leadership" because I don't see much of that going on. Questioning the US government appears to be un-american these days.
The article was short on implementation details but let me hypothesize a bit. Imagine if the law was changed to require Koreans (or others) to sign on to their isp in a fashion that positively verified their identify. Now imagine that this system is normally about 99 percent effective (yeah right). Doesn't this correct the reasons that online opinion polling is assumed to not work ? Couldn't this (hypothetically folks) allow a polling system to restrict votes to one per person, and allow any user entered profile data (with the users permission) to be verified ?
I realize there are many ways a positive id system could be abused, but if online opinion polling could be made accurate and easy to implement, some govts might wind up getting more than they'd bargained for.
In the best case scenario, all I could see happening from this is a huge exchange in names and numbers over something like IRC and this would invalidate whatever information the government thinks they can gain by this. In the worst case scenario, people would seriously have their lives f*cked because the government would actually believe that all the information it sees is true.
...we'll see each other connected to the cyberspace, with an ID chip bundled with our bluetooth simstims, our movements & emotions surveyed by the state's AI, everyone in full peace, love and harmony.... yaddayaddayadda.
I wonder when(/if) we'll ever stop.
If you have multiple IPs then they pretty much already have it - RIPE rules state that the contact address for any netblock must be valid. Not that I care - my life isn't interesting enough for it to matter.
Even for a single static IP it's trivially traceable - PC Plod calls ISP, ISP releases your contact details...
Dynamic IP is only slightly harder - you just need a reasonably accurate time of day.
they should be forced to have a real picture of themselves too so i wont ever be tricked into cybering with a horny old pervert... again
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
This may be partially the argument in Korea as well, even though it still dowsn't apply to outlawing nicknames on private message boards. However, considering the traditional need for a strong centralized government in Asian countries, at the cost of individual rights, it's just natural that Korea would be among the first to implement this. I'm wondering whether Singapore, the most authoritarian of these countries, didn't pass similar laws already...
No, because it's still a self-selected sample group.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Are you kidding? I mean, seriously, if it weren't for annonymity on the internet, there is no way it could be what it is today. Once you introduce a way to identify the online persona(s) with the actual person, the person is immediately limited to what is socially acceptable for them. Things can be traced all too easily, and all of a sudden, all the things that Mr. X was participating in that were kinda fun but not something he would do normally (like posting and reading /. at work or visiting in Role Playing forums) become impossible to do, because people will know it was him.
Do you really want people to know that you were cruising the thread "What are the signs I have prostate cancer?" on healthsite.com? One of the reasons the internet is so amazing is that it allows people to get information on nearly ANYTHING at will, and without anyone knowing about it. Sometimes we crave weird information, and sometimes we like to discuss said weird information. Big Brother reasons aside, there are plenty of examples that could be provided for remaining anonymous.
Slashdot was a bad example for you to use. Look at it: Without forcing people to be identifiable, a system has come into use that allows people to remain unknown without sacrificing the quality of the discussion: Moderation. Unless I'm moderating, very rarely do I see obnoxious "frist psost suxorz!" messages or goatse links. Amazon issues could be assuaged, if they really wanted to. As for Usenet... well, that's the fundamental nature, and I'm fairly positive that most users wouldn't want their true identities revealed.
Nothing says that it is illegal to have an alias in the United States, so long as one does not attempt to defraud or commit illegal acts with it. Sometimes words can border on illegal acts, if the court rules that something illegal has been said, like in the MPAA vs. 2600 Magazine situation, but here at least it is legal to use a pseudonym.
And one thing that would strongly help to deter this kind of legislation in the U.S. is a couple hundred years of authors using pseudonyms.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
South Korea has had a coup in the past; democracy was lost and the military was in power for some time. It seems to me like some Slashdotter's have lost sight of the big picture on democratic rights. National ID's are questionable but they are a very secondary problem when compared to challenged freedom of speech and the right to vote - and these rights are not self-evident in most of the world.
And oh yes, south Korea borders to some true barbarians in the north. A coup just might trigger nuclear war over there.
Tor
Sooo . . . I should be allowed to ask about anything as long as I don't ask whether I should be allowed to ask? Phzzt . . . whoops, hold on a sec, my hippocampus is overheating.
Seriously though. I think what you're trying to say is that people should never be punished for asking questions. That I can agree with.
I think you're also trying to say that personal liberty is a value so fundamental that it would be foolish even to ask whether it might be a good idea to limit it in some cases. And that I do not agree with; there are plenty of cases where individual liberty is at odds with the interests of other individuals or those of society. As the old saw goes, "Your right to swing your arm ends at my nose." In the absence of any restraint on personal liberty, you have chaos; suppose I choose to exercise my personal liberty by murdering random strangers on the street? If you try to stop me, you are abrogating my liberty.
Establishing a good balance between personal liberty and the interests of others is an ongoing process, and questioning the premises on which the current balance is based is vital maintenance.
This Korean proposal is a perfect example. The government says "We should do this," and people say "Why?" and then you have a debate which hopefully ends up in a course of action acceptable to the interested parties. It's when that process is derailed that bad things start happening: when the government says "It's going to be this way" and pays no attention to the citizenry, the chances that the resulting legislation will be narrow, self-serving crap rise dramatically.
For that reason, we should always be allowed to question every facet of our political systems, without exception.
I mean, in a country where 17% of all people are named Kim, you would have to add date and place of birth to make it a unique ID.
And, after all, a number like 526590 is much easier to remember...
It still doesn't work cause, yeah, it's self-selected (e.g. only the people who care enough about the poll decide to vote in it) and because the population profile of the internet does not equal the profile of the population as a whole (because you have an internet connection I can immediately tell you that its more likely that you come from middle class or above and have at least a high school education, with a high probability of college, too, etc.)
Maybe we should pull all of our troops out of South Korea...
Oh, by the way, here's a list of e-mail contacts for the Korean spammers who made it impossible for me to use my last e-mail address. Have at them, harvestbots!
abuse@kornet.net, ip@ns.kornet.net, ip@ns.kornet21.net, domain@NS.KORNET.NET, donghk@soback.kornet.net, ever@kt.co.kr, jeonnam3@soback.kornet.net, jeon@kornet.net, jeonbuk3@kornet.net, koreatelecom@KORNET.NET, gfd5246@soback.kornet.net, gspark@kornet.net, help@KORNET.NET, helpdesk@KORNET.NET, haewha1@soback.kornet.net, heyeunmi@kornet.net, kmhno1@soback.kornet.net, hopewon3@soback.kornet.net, kgromc@soback.kornet21.net, kmhno1@soback.kornet.net, legal@KORNET.NET, network@kornet.net, packet@soback.kornet.net, postmaster@kornet.net, postmaster@soback.kornet.net, postmaster@ns.kornet.net, postmaster@soback.kornet.net, pusanpub@soback.kornet.net, root@soback.kornet.net, root@kt.co.kr, service@kornet.net, support@kornet.net, system@kornet.net, yjjeon61@kornet.net, abuse@ns.kornet21.net, domain@ns.kornet21.net, network@ns.kornet21.net, postmaster@ns.kornet21.net, resume@kornet.net, root@ns.kornet21.net, service@ns.kornet21.net, support@ns.kornet21.net, system@ns.kornet21.net, wong@kornet.net, abuse@ASADAL.NET, postmaster@ASADAL.NET, manager@cais.kaist.ac.kr, abuse@hanmir.com, postmaster@hanmir.com, webmaster@hanmir.com, msweet@kt.co.kr, abuse@itnsoft.com, help@itnsoft.com, ip@ns.kornet.net, hostmaster@nic.or.kr, marom@itnsoft.com, postmaster@itnsoft.com, root@itnsoft.com, eglee@yesnic.com, info@yesnic.com, hostmaster@yesnic.com, postmaster@yesnic.com, eglee@whois.co.kr, postmaster@whois.co.kr, whois@whois.co.kr, brkim@INWANG.NOWCOM.CO.KR, domain@NOWNURI.NET, busisik@nownuri.net, kbr@nownuri.net, memory@nownuri.net, abuse@nownuri.net, postmaster@nownuri.net, abuse@dreamx.net, abuse@cjdream.net, abuse@todream.net, admin@dreamx.net, admin@cjdream.net, administration@dreamx.net, administration@cjdream.net, billing@DREAMX.NET, billing@cjdream.net, brkim@cjdream.com, dns@dreamx.net, dns@cjdream.net, dnsadmin@dreamx.net, dnsadmin@cjdream.net, domain@DREAMX.NET, domain@todream.net, domains@DREAMX.NET, domain@todream.net, feedback@DREAMX.NET, feedback@cjdream.net, help@DREAMX.NET, help@cjdream.net, helpdesk@DREAMX.NET, helpdesk@cjdream.net, hostmaster@dreamx.net, hostmaster@cjdream.net, inhanna@cjdream.net, info@dreamx.net, info@cjdream.net, jyan@dreamx.net, jyan@cjdream.net, ley319@dreamx.net, loveabuse@dreamx.net, loveabuse@cjdream.net, mail@dreamx.net, mail@cjdream.net, mgr@cjdream.com, news@dreamx.net, news@cjdream.net, newsabuse@dreamx.net, newsabuse@cjdream.net, postmaster@dreamx.net, postmaster@todream.net, raven3@dreamx.net, raven3@empal.com, root@dreamx.net, root@cjdream.net, soip@cjdream.com, sales@dreamx.net, sales@cjdream.net, sbkim091@dreamx.net, sbkim091@cjdream.net, service@DREAMX.NET, service@cjdream.net, solhan@cjdream.net, spam@DREAMX.NET, spam@cjdream.net, support@cjdream.net, support@dreamx.net, sysop@DREAMX.NET, sysop@cjdream.net, sysop@todream.net, tech@dreamx.net, tech@cjdream.net, technical@dreamx.net, technical@cjdream.net, technicalsupport@dreamx.net, technicalsupport@cjdream.net, system@cjdream.net, system@dreamx.net, sysop@todream.net, ykshin@cjdream.net, ykshin@dreamx.net, eglee@yesnic.com, info@yesnic.com, hostmaster@yesnic.com, eglee@whois.co.kr, brkim@INWANG.NOWCOM.CO.KR, domain@NOWNURI.NET, kbr@nownuri.net, memory@nownuri.net, busisik@nownuri.net, abuse@nownuri.net, postmaster@nownuri.net, inhanna@sysone.co.kr, abuse@thrunet.com, abuse@korea.com, admin@thrunet.com, admin@korea.com, administration@thrunet.com, dns@thrunet.com, dns@korea.com, dnsadmin@thrunet.com, domain@thrunet.com, feedback@thrunet.com, feedback@korea.com, help@thrunet.com, helpdesk@thrunet.com, hostmaster@thrunet.com, mail@thrunet.com, mail@korea.com, news@thrunet.com, news@korea.com, newsabuse@thrunet.com, postmaster@
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
For those that do not know a large portion of the net in Korea is owned or operated by Chinese big companies..
So is the influence of N Korea or China in this Real Name on boards requirement?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
As you may know South Korea is king of the MMO. I tried to play one of them once. They all require you to provide your KSSN# in order to play. That is something which I could not get, being not a Korean citizen. The freaky part is that from the SSN using simple math, similar to the ISBN, you can figure out if the person is male or female. So in South Korean MMOs you are completely non anonymous.
I'd like to have their pretty pretty games, but not at that cost.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I very much doubt that spammers would obey the rules. It wouldn't be that hard to find out someone else's name and passport number, so we'd have innocent people being prosecuted and the spammers getting away with it. And I bet that the burden of proof would be on the person whose identity was stolen to prove that it wasn't them.
it's obviously north korea. I mean, come on people. Use your head, pssssh. Some people ....
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Normally I ignore AC posters, but... Indeed, I am an American. And you're also right. Feel free to check out my journal, where I bemoan the return to McCarthyism.
So does this mean no more spam from qwerty1234@somedomain.kr?
Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.
- Oscar Wilde
... didn't the outgoing last president get caught paying a half billion dollar cash bribe to kim il sucky in the north?
Methinks there's a little more to this than these obvious differences. Bribes like that don't get paid without several good reasons, and I don't think threat of invasion was one of them.
No reason for that I can prove or drop a link to, just, I don't think so. I think perhaps sometime soon the "differences" between the two koreas won't be as much as they are now, with the ball dropped on the "way more authoritarian" side of the court than onto the "more individuality and personal freedom" side.
I also think it will involve around the fact of the global economic mess, and oil, and who has large armies, and etceteras like that.
And really, it is only a WAG on that, subject to change with new data.
..."suppose I choose to exercise my personal liberty by murdering random strangers on the street? If you try to stop me, you are abrogating my liberty..."
Sophostry. Illegal activities, beit murder, fraud, libel, slander, or anything deemed so for the protection of the public is not a "right." That is unless you can find a caselaw or Common Law statement of such from any legitimate court. Since you can't we'll ignore this particularly unfortunate statement and move on.
It will be really interesting to log onto a Korean discussion forum and see that all the posts are made by Messrs Kim, Park, and Oh.
That'll cover 45% of the population, according to the
1945 census
So not the entire population, but a lot more than the top 3 in the 1990 US census (Smith, Johnson, Williams) - about 8 million total, somewhere under 3%.
Maybe the Korean government is going to look for people who are making way too many posts and make sure they're not about to die from sitting at their terminal for 8 hours in some Seoul baang.
...and a real drag for the John Smith's of the world. Create such a law, and you would rush to have even weirder spellings for their children's birth names to give them that extra notice in life. You would also see people lining up to change their legal names. Future generations will hear: "My name is Puffy Pants...but you can call my by my nickname...John Smith."
I don't know about the UK in general, but I'm here at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
In order to use the ethernet ports available on campus, they make us register the physical MAC address of our ethernet adapters. Then the name that's resolved by our IP addresses has our LAN username attached to it (which of course doubles as our email address).
So anyone who logs my address with my username when I make some sort of connection to their server or whatnot, can email or further figure who I am and where I'm at.
It's a little unnerving. I'll be glad to purged from this system in a couple of weeks.
I hate to point it out, but you seem to have used the same example twice.
MacIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission
y berlaw/miller.htm for the judicial opinion on that.
The US Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects speaking anonymously. 514 U.S. 334, 342 (1995), if you want to read their reasoning.
Even more directly applicable was a Georgia law forbidding pseudonymous Internet communication. See http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/peter_j_spiro/c
Clearly the reasoning behind this rule is to suppress dissent. I dont know whether this is about N. or S. Korea, but neither one would surprise me.
In North Korea, for example, everyone is required to have a picture of Kim Jong Il prominently displayed in their home. If an official comes to your house and finds the picture missing or displayed in a way which seems unsuitably reverent you can be arrested and jailed for up to two years.
(And what is it about dictators that they insist on splashing their ugly monkey-faces everywhere?
The policy of locking people up for their dissent is foolhardy, especially in a bankrupt country. Likewise, policies which suppress free expression prevent the free exchange and evolution of ideas. Considering that North Korea's best idea for helping their economy is to use nuclear weapons to extort help from the West, the region needs as much free exchange as it can get.
If this new law applied to South Korea it would seem to indicate a sea change in the political climate. Such a shift is not unprecedented in their history. People there still hold to the ideals of Confucianism which values the needs of the collective over the individual. Nevertheless South Koreans value freedom and the right of protest, so this law could not be upheld there for very long.
Here's a cool study about Political Protest in East Asia.
-- thinkyhead software and media
then I'll be happy to give you my name.
a society where no one has to hide behind pseudonyms to speak their mind
is what we are aiming at. Noone is there yet.
one where people feel the need not to compromise themselves or something by saying their opinion
is where all societies are at present. Some societies allow you to give your opinion with less retribution than others.
Admit it, you are just jealous of my car.... :)
Karma, Carma whatever.
You can't handle the truth.
I'll readily admit that I've personally borne a few grudges against the way things are done there, and the way certain things have been done in the Korean-way to me, but hey, a surviving and thriving culture exists because it has survived, and some aspects of it have proven to be successful in terms of self-preservation and self-propagation (and not being so offensive as to warrant annihilation by a united front of other cultures).
As to whether or not the baa-baa-sheep-like-ness will prove to be seriously detrimental to Korean society in the future will require many decades of observation, and many hours spent watching the History Channel after those decades have passed. Who knows? Maybe they've got it right.
Pass the kimchee, please.
We were talking about establishing limits on personal liberty. The laws you refer to are those limits. Their existence proves my point: that society cannot function properly in the absence of some form of restraing on personal liberty.
On a lighter note, I quote Reverend Lovejoy: "If the government approves of it, it must be moral!"
Thanks for an amusing conversation. Go ahead and reply if you want; for my part I'm going to drop it here.
Please read "Once shunned, Chinese in Korea courted again". Even to this day, the Koreans have a racist attitude against non-Koreans. Most damning is the discriminatory laws that the Koreans have used against non-Koreans. The government of Korea gives preferential treatment to ethnic Koreans seeking Korean citizenship, and if you cannot prove that you are ethnically Korean, then you must obtain a personal guarantee from a high-ranking government official. Even more shocking, for more than 50 years, non-Koreans were prohibited from owning businesses. The Koreans "successfully" drove out most of the Chinese, reducing their number from 150,000 to 20,000.
Before the first Harry Potter book was published, its publisher feared that boys might not read a book if they knew a woman wrote it, so they made Joanne Kathleen Rowling use her initials. If the law forced them to put her full first name on the cover, perhaps it would not have become as popular.
My goodness, people. Just about everyone is jumping in and condemning the government of SK. Before we do that, why don't we take a look at free speech itself?
Free speech is an externality. For those of you who know econ, that means that it's something that affects the people around you and not just you. Pollution and noisy air traffic are also externalities. When dealing with externalities, there are no absolute rights or wrongs. If we ban air traffic, for example, that will hurt people who want to fly, but benefit those who live around airports. If we allow unfettered traffic, it'll benefit travellers but harm those on the ground. So what do we do? We find a place to draw the line, hence laws saying air traffic must be during certain times of the day.
Now, how does this apply to free speech? Political correctness, for example, grants benefits to those who are offended at the expense of those who want to say what they want, whereas allowing unfettered speech benefits those who want to speak at the expense of those who can be offended. It just so happens in *IN OUR CULTURE* under our own Lockean system of beliefs, we think that the benefits of free speech outweigh the benefits of protecting from censorship, so we draw the line so that it's favorable for free speech. But there *IS* a line. If I hold up a gun to you and shout, "I hate you, I feel like killing you," I would be prosecuted for assault. I didn't pull the trigger; all I did was say some very frightening words. Why doesn't free speech protect me there? Because in that case, the benefits of free speech do NOT outweigh the benefits of not feeling immediate threat. And that is why we have assault laws. Likewise, if I shout "fire" in a crowded theatre and people are trampled to injury or death in the ensuing chaos, I would be arrested because I've crossed the line of free speech.
So free speech is NOT absolute! It's not easy to digest philosophically because idealists like to make blanket black-and-white statements about what's right and wrong. But it's the truth; there exists no absolute free speech, and as a result, there is the task of drawing the line between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. These lines are determined by many factors, including practical considerations, philosophies, cultures, and what the people want. Asian culture has been a collectivist one for hundreds upon hundreds of years, and it is not to be unexpected for them to tend to draw the line at a place where us westerners, under the influence of a few hundred years of John Locke, would feel uncomfortable with. Who are we to say that their line is wrong and ours is right? Have we the arrogance to pass judgment on another culture like that?
Likewise, many people reacted very poorly to the 9/11 restrictions. Yet, the general populace liked the security (or, rather, the false sense of security). So the voters decided to draw the line differently, and despite whatever number of protests there have been, the liberals are in the minority. So what is to say that they are right, even when the majority thinks otherwise?
Think about it.
This is why it is absolutely critical that we continue to support and develop projects like IIP and Freenet.
No mo' Neo.
What's this? A well reasoned response that states it's point in an understandable fassion, doesn't slam anyone down and has examples that make sense???
Man - what's this place coming to that we let people post this stuff?
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Yeah, I mean, if it's not happening in America, it can't be important, right?
Claude Angers
Caught between the political (and often physical) warfare between freedom and communism, most Koreans have learned that to stay alive, you have to be sheep-like and go with whoever is in charge. This unfortunately has held true for the great majority of the world for the great majority of the time. You can only name a few societies -- and those in recent history only -- where someone is allowed to speak out for his rights, and to challenge government and their legitimacy, without fear of any repercussion from the government.
There has been the Korean "Founding Father" types -- but they have all been martyred by the Japanese. Then there were the political advocates who wanted more freedom -- unfortunately, they were contemporaries of some of the most ruthless communist movements, and distinguishing the two is difficult. Being a communist in that day and age was suicide, because the government had to crack down to prevent revolutions and the slaughter of entire villages.
We in America are truly blessed. We revolted against the British, and our Founding Fathers lived to tell the story. You can imagine how different we would be as a people if they didn't survive. Imagine how different we would be if we had lost to the British, the Nazis, the Japanese, or the Russians.
As to the future of Korea, there are those who are coming out of the woodwork, standing up for real freedom and less government intrusion. There are those advocating limited government and the powerful individual. It won't happen overnight, but there is a way for them to gain a peaceful, free society. Unlike some other countries in the area, they do believe that there is a right and a wrong, and giving your life for the right is noble, even when those around you say otherwise. I think this is another reason why Christianity has prospered in Korea.
One of the steps to get them to real freedom will have to be the abandonment of the universal registration and identification system. It serves no purpose, other than to allow someone to steal your identity, or allow corrupt government officials to track you down.
It is a right of the people to speak anonymously, especially when what they say is liable to get them hurt or killed. Didn't the federalist papers get published by an anonymous writer who used a pseudonym? Why should the Korean people not be allowed to publish anonymous comments on the message boards of their servant, the government?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The best example of anonymous, free speech are the Federalist papers, published by several of our Founding Fathers under the pseudonym "Publius".
Without that influential publication, we would probably not have survived as a nation, as our strong federal government would never have been formed.
Today, we require free speech -- the freedom to say what we want, in the medium we want to say it, whenever and however we like to say it -- under whatever name we want to use.
Just like guns protect our right to our property, our family, and our way of life when threatened, using pseudonyms allow us to protect our right to free speech when it is threatened. Take it away, and we might as well invite Saddam to be our president, as no one will dare sacrifice their name and reputation for dissenting thought and speech.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Korea has got a long history of brutal, authoritarian government. Democracy is a very young thing in Korea, and not something the culture is very conducive toward. Koreans on matters tend to be very rightious, extreamly infactic, authoritarian, and prepared to smash whatever gets in the way of completing the task at hand. So don't be surprised the government is behaving this way, even their Buddhist monks have been known to go on riots.
Not to mention that if you really piss off Korea, they'll hire their own internal assassins to come and rip your guts out. Sinanju, baby. Sinanju.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Normally I ignore AC posters, but... Indeed, I am an American. And you're also right. Feel free to check out my journal, where I bemoan the return to McCarthyism.
Return? Homeboy, we never left. IN the 70s and 80s, instead of ruining people for being communist, it was ruining people for being satanists. Some of that stretched into the 90s, but in the 90s Political Correctness hit full throttle, and anything you said that wasn't PC got you in deep shit. Ain't nothing changed. It's about time we realize that America has been heading downhill for longer than it ever went uphill and do something about THAT. The constitution, as beautiful as it may seem, doesn't fucking work. Personally I think the main problem is in the voting method, but right now the constitution isn't working because people are just plain ignoring it. It's become just like the old witchcraft laws, still on the books but nobody pays attention to it anymore.
Luckily every decade we've had has had some sort of witchhunt going on. Free? America? It's always been Amerika, and it always will be Amerika.
And before you people chime in with "IT sure beats whatever comes in second place", I'll just say "fuck off" right now. Fuck off.
for fudgefactor: sorry about the rant in response to your post, I get so sick of hearing about how wonderful america is. I get so sick of hearing how wonderful anyplace else is, actually.
Like what I said? You might like my music
In the absence of any restraint on personal liberty, you have chaos; suppose I choose to exercise my personal liberty by murdering random strangers on the street? If you try to stop me, you are abrogating my liberty.
You know, I get so sick of people equating anarchy to chaos. There is no such thing as an absence of restraint on personal liberty. You really think that without a government, individual citizens wouldn't take up arms to protect the public safety? How many VOLUNTEER cops do we have? How about our VOLUNTEER army? Yes, individual citizens do take responsibility for this stuff, and they put their lives on the line whenever necessary to protect the public at large. The main difference between anarchy and outright democracy is that democracy is slow to effect changes, while anarchy works more like the bazaar of open source development, except on a social scale.
Why won't you go out and commit blind, mass murder in an anarchist state? Because you will be killed. Simple as that. In a democracy people have to obey the laws and will be more likely to get the law involved than take matters into their own hands. Someone figures out you killed a couple of people, determines you had no good reason for it, and bang! you're dead. He then shows to the world (somehow) how he, in fact, HAD a good reason to kill you, and nobody fucks with him. They might even pay him for the service.
The absence of government doesn't immediately introduce immorality and chaos. Know why? People are essentially responsible and moral.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Until South Korea does something about their spam to message ratio, and their open relays, I can't think of any good reason why they should be allowed to connect to the rest of the world.
I think the basic idea of making broadband universally available is a great one, but if the software that comes with the broadband packages doesn't have security built into it, what the South Koreans have built is a gigantic public nuisance.
Tech Public Policy stuff
te goal is that everyone can be identified by the gov't....
Now keep in mind there was a video game preview I wanted to download and it took me all of 15 minutes to find a valid korean resident ID.
Slashdot readers are a pretty small proportion of the population, you know. If someone's posting goatse links or trolls as Fred Smith rather than as Anonymous Coward, that doesn't really help you, and even if you get pissed off enough to work out where they live, what's the chance that you'll be close enough, and pissed-off enough, to do anything?
I've seen technical mailing lists that enforce "plausible names" though, those are reasonable in some contexts. (They won't let you subscribe unless you either give your real name, or invent a plausible "real name" - they basically want to know which user they're talking to, even if they don't actually have a real name.)
I often post under my real name myself (well, my real initials, and my real name is readily available if you have half a clue where to look), but I think I should be able to post/etc. under an alias, the same way I could claim my name was Fred Smith, or just not tell you, if I met you in real life. Of course, as in real life, you'd be within your rights not to listen to me, but isn't that is why Slashdot has a "filter ACs" option?
--SMcV
Sometimes it's not always about free speech.
Using your real name is never good, using a fake does give you a small measure of security from the lunatics out there.
I'm not sure if Korea either doesn't have lunatics to worry about or if they like to help them along as much as possible.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Should this not be
Well, what can we do? eh Raise taxes? eh Okay. eh Add the GST? eh Okay. eh What can we do? eh
--My sig is bigger than your sig--
During a lay-over in Seoul I watched the Korean security staff at the airport insult, berate, and hassle the Japanese travelers who were changing planes. Language difficulties seemed to be the trigger. When we finally landed in Osaka, it was the Korean passengers' turn for abuse.
I should point out that the Japanese did this with substantially more style. Whereas the Koreans were openly hostile in Seoul, the Japanese were cold and suspicious. A Korean could spend a lot of extra time going through Japanese customs.
Being an American, I experienced no problems at either end, and I waltzed through Japanese customs in under five minutes. This was in 1994. The climate may have changed since then.
-Hope
Surely you're joking; are you so unaware of what North Korea is like that you think it necessary to state something like this? Do you actually believe that the North Korean government would even let ordinary citizens go online?
Interesting - I've seen this view expressed before, but not in a forum where I could easily reply.
Tell me - how does your reasoning apply to the current situation in Baghdad? Is the US military doing profoundly the wrong thing by instituting a strict law & order policy, whereas it would be better to let the chaos sort itself out? Does the distribution of weapons affect this? Does a history of living under a very repressive regime? Is perhaps your argument actually rooted strongly in the American frontier culture, and not translateable to regions that have been civilized (more or less) for millenia? What does Baghdad show us?
Tell me - how does your reasoning apply to the current situation in Baghdad? Is the US military doing profoundly the wrong thing by instituting a strict law & order policy, whereas it would be better to let the chaos sort itself out? Does the distribution of weapons affect this? Does a history of living under a very repressive regime? Is perhaps your argument actually rooted strongly in the American frontier culture, and not translateable to regions that have been civilized (more or less) for millenia? What does Baghdad show us?
My reasoning is mostly theoretical. Historically there have been many cases of anarchy, and inevitably the responsible people I was referring to establish a government to sort it out. Mind you that sometime before there was this oppressive regime in Iraq, there was anarchy, and either through a succession of regimes or directly, the most recent was established. Anarchy is a lot like communism in that it's a beautiful theory, but probably impossible to implement.
The important thing to keep in mind is that the responsible people usually install government to deal with all of the protocols. The thing I was mostly opposing in the grandparent post was the idea that in an anarchist state people would run crazy without any check on their balance. Frequently I see people suggest that and characterize all people as psychotic killers kept in check solely by the rule of law. Since the rule of law was established by people, it doesn't stand to reason that law is the only thing keeping people in check. There is more, and there must be, otherwise government could not exist and people could not live together.
To more directly answer your question about Baghdad, I don't know if the US military is doing profoundly the wrong thing or not with their strict law and order policy, but I do know that if they threw it to chaos and let Darwin step in and choose a government, there's absolutely no guarantee that we won't find ourselves in this same situation in another 10 years. (we'll assume for the sake of argument that the US government will install a wonderful, beautiful democracy and that the Iraqis won't immediately overthrow it)
The distribution of weapons always corresponds to the distribution of power. See how the US government continues to take more power, while it also continues to disarm its own citizens. While these two facts may not be related other than the me drawing a conclusion with them, they are both true.
While my argument is mostly rooted in American frontier culture, it stands true throughout history. It's just important to understand that in order to establish protocols for interaction responsible people have always installed government.
Like what I said? You might like my music
"Growing up in a proud Korean household...."
Being a pathetic racist strutting around with a chip on your shoulder about how much more attention the Korean girls (on both sides of the Pacific) pay attention to "white boys" than to you surely qualifies you for mainstream status among "chae mi kyo p'o", but hardly makes you "proud".
And your assumption that those who are not ethnically Korean can't really know as much as you do about events in Korea as you do is an absurd idea. Ask your father. If I didn't know him, I knew people he knew. And though I don't intend to provide any details, I assure you that visualight is not unique, and that some of us not only spoke fluent Korean but had access to people, places, and events that you will never know of.
I'll also add that your father's contemporaries had a grace and class that bears no resemblance to your concept of "pride".
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Yep, basically.