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Cyber Bullying Destroys Anonymity
aussie_a writes "The BBC has an article on online bullying in South Korea. The problem has grown so large that in addition to the police having dedicated cyber terror units, the South Korean government will enact a law next year forcing South Koreans to reveal their name and ID before posting online. However some ISPs want the government to go further and to ban some people from being able to log onto the internet at all."
Geeez, sometimes, those guys should get a life!!!
Anyone that post's will get a slap!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
..stop butling yourself!
Nelson's simple message was that there are worse things in life than name calling. Such as invasion of privacy.
I thought South Korean was supposed to be the democratic country and the beacon of freedom in stark contrast to the north. Feh. Looks like they want to muzzle their youth and disable anonymous speech, the most important kind (see the Boston Tea Party, for example). Of course, you can see this in the United States where they have disabled anonymous air travel, among other things.
Just say something disparaging about Macs.
Then stand back and watch the mob form.
In Korea, only old people bully on the internet...
BBC must have made a mistake. I am sure they meant North Korea and not South Korea.
That was a totally unfair slur against the stereotypical Mac user. TFA is about bullying, a mob of mincing Macophiles would only be concerned with sodomy.
In Korea only old people use the internet to bully eachother lolol
Doesnt seem to be a right in their country. Oh well, it is their country, their rules, nothing to see here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Haven't the South Koreans heard of self-policing online communities? Why don't these communities take care of their own problems? And if the community won't take care of the problem, then why be part of that community? Go somewhere else, it's a big (world wide) world out there.
I wrote a document on the possibilities of someone having their lives shattered via e-Framing a while back Breaking Point. I saw it then as a method someone could screw someone else's life up in hopes to revise the document on how to protect one's self. I can see a black market economy in the shadows revolving around this same thing.
Infiltrated dot Net
The Internet is Serious Business
Anonymous does not forgive.
Perhaps the South's plan for reunification involves taking away the freedoms their northern neighbours lack one by one. The right to freely associate is a good place to start. Next, maybe they can make critizing the government a crime.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
"Because on the internet information spreads quickly we need a system which blocks individuals from using the net in cases of defamation - something that will stop the spread of information before it happens, to save the victim."
Uh yeah... or maybe you could teach people not to believe everything they read online.
I love this "stop the spread of information . . . to save the victim".
What perspective.
Let them collect numbers. If it stops cyber-bullying, which is a *real* problem in our world, good for them. As an aside, I'm teaching English here in SK at the moment, and the whole social networking side of the country is pretty much invisible to me. The article was an interesting insight into a culture that, as a non-Korean speaker, I can never be a part of.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Does South Korea have a civil court system where someone can sue for libel and/or slander? It isn't a new problem. All you need is one psychopath with a grudge and a lot of free time to make your life miserable.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
What are the chances of this being, at least in part, due to North Korea trying to sow disunity and chaos amongst the South?
For some reason, the mental image of Kim Jong-Il yelling across the DMZ: "Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries!" seems rather appropriate.
We've already hashed this out once.
I think most people on /. have made their way around the internet tubes and have seen the best and worst the internet has to offer. And while it's true that there are sometimes "mobs" of people (SA goons, for example) that can stir up trouble when they really want to, the fact of the matter is that the internet is the one place where you DON'T need to put up with the shit you see. Someone is harassing you on MSN messenger? Block them. They do it with a different account? Get a new account. Same goes for email or forums.
We already have the means to control what we want to see, and it's a Good Thing. What we don't need is the government telling us what we should and should not see; we are fully capable of managing that ourselves.
Now, the article talked about real harassment, which is hardly the same as "cyber bullying", but there are already laws against that (at least in the U.S.)
It's not cyber bullying that's destroying online anonymity... it's the SK government.
Find something that everyone finds bad (bullying) and use it as an excuse to prevent anonymous free expression! I wonder how long until the US mandates this?
Just think about it, mandatory identification for your protection. It's just like the passport idea but on-line.
Gee, I wonder what company will win the bid to design and build the huge database for everyone's name and login id's?
No. We have the same social problems we've always had. We're just seeing them in these new places we've created.
We've always had anonymous gangs.
We've always had mob culture.
We've always had people reacting by suppressing expression and freedom.
(I feel like David Byrne.)
The good news is that the people who've been studying human behavior in "the real world" are now waking up to the fact that the internet is also "the real world." The separation was always artificial, and it's ending.
What with this, and the terror of fan death, South Korea is a dangerous place indeed...
I spend most of my time in bed, darling.
Hmm, I read the article, but I'm having difficulty imagining the problem. So people can defame you and make threats to you online, right? But in what form? Do they send you messages on your personal account (not email, obviously ;-) )? Do they post messages on public fora? Do they post material on their own blogs or websites? All of the above? I think the form this "bullying" takes is quite important for understanding and dealing with the problem.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
http://www.bullyinginstitute.org/
grow up or i'll trip you, take your lunch money and give you a wedgie. Then you'll have something to cry about.
...this pretty much counts as the nuclear option in South Korea's war on cyberbullies. Sure, it should certainly annihilate the target, online bullying, along with legitimate criticism of the government, corporate and civil corruption whistleblowers, and, heck, probably even cybering rooms. It's a huge step backward for free Korean society.
On the plus side, I'm not quite so hopelessly envious of their median residential bandwidth anymore...
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Sounds to me like 21st century book burning. South Korea doesn't have the capabilities to destroy the collective knowledge of the internet, so they restrict its own population into ignorance and loss of impartial ideas. This is step #1 to mobilize minds under false pretense. There was another superpower who did this...
"Cyber Bullying Destroys Anonymity" should read "Government Outlaws Internet Anonymity in Response to Cyber Bullying". Laws don't magically spring forth from citizen's bad behavior.
-Peter
Quite a transparent attempt to collect info on people , just give a look at the article
..or even more probable, your opinion about people having actual human rights isn't appreciated in this company, we value profit above all thank you.
Online mobs first demonise those they disagree with, then the victim's home address, credit card details, and even their boss's phone numbers get passed around.
Yeah it is possible, it ALWAYS was possible, it's hardly news. Why don't people do that all the time ? Because they a LOT better and more entertaining stuff to do , only a few deraged psycopaths looking for attention do that stuff routinely.
Chun Seong Lee, Liaison Officer at the Cyber Terror Response Centre."It's happening a lot. In these situations people could lose their job, or it could affect their social life, even causing mental illness. That's all happening because of the development of the internet, of course."
That's insane, that's blaming internet for the trouble caused by few psycopaths. One can see a close parallel in american paranoid obsession for terrorism and the damage caused by this obsession, such as attacks on citizens accused to be "terror supporter" for merely DISAGREEING with the obsessed people, accusation of treason by keyboard warrior chickenhawks, incitation to hate. Some people profited on this obsession, expecially these around the "jingoism" business.
Similarly, the obsession with people exposing your personal data on the internet isn't CAUSED by the possibility of remaining _partially_ anonymous on the internet, but is caused by terrorizing tactiques of few "bullies" that can be traced with a little effort from police, without forcing the whole population to give up personal relevant information WHICH could also be easily hacked into and _really_ abused.
Next year a new law will come into force which will force Koreans to reveal their name and ID number before they share their opinions online.
Sure and if another iunta governemt, or quasi fascist government a-la GWB reach the power, your opinions may come back to haunt you. Or more probably, your employer doesn't like your exposing wrongdoing
And if the cyberbully harrasses you tell him to fuck off and then leave them alone..without attention, they quickly go find themselves an easier target...maybe you can also pretend to be scared and then scare them back, if you really wanna be so frivolous to waste time with them.
The article says,
Am I missing something? How could you lose your job because of something somebody said about you on the Internet? How could you lose your job because of something somebody said about you off the Internet?
Boss: Hey, I heard on the Internet that you eat babies.
Employee: I never did that. Some people who hate me for no reason accused me falsely. Look, here's their website just for defaming me. Behold their lies.
Boss: Wow, they are pretty crazy. Now that I think about it, it doesn't make much sense that you would eat babies anyway. And to think that I was going to fire you...
Exactly what kind of mental illnesses is he talking about? I don't really understand how that would work. I mean, I guess being made fun of by people hurts your feelings, but that's not really an illness in my book. I seriously doubt that people are being so injured by the words brought against them that they become hysterical any time they get near a computer or anything like that.
I don't know where he gets off saying that all of these things, even if they do happen, are happening because of the Internet. People have been slandering each other since they learned how to talk. The Internet is just one of the many things that makes it easier to talk. It doesn't even make it that much easier for a would-be offender to reach the target, in that the target can just press the "Block"/"Warn"/"Report inappropriate content" button.
As for his claim that cyberbullying "could affect their social life," I wasn't aware that it was anybody else's job to look out for my social life.
This space reserved for administrative use.
some ISPs want the government to go further and to ban some people from being able to log onto the internet at all.
Hell, that's a great idea -- I definitely know several people who should be banned from logging onto the internet at all...
(This is a joke, for all you "Flamebait" and "Troll" moderators devoid of any sense of humor).
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Why must free speech be equated to "no responsibility" speech?
If you are reporting about government or bad-employer activities, that's an area where free speech is needed to protect the speaker, but when it comes to personal sniping against other individuals -- individuals need protection against anonymous sniping.
Taking responsibility for personal attacks is part of learning "responsibility for having free speech". To encourage irresponsibility is too encourage the death of freedom (witness America)...
Seems to be a vicious extension of the clique mentality at the junior to senior high level. Some bad people post web gossip about other people. Female victims are criticised for appearance and friends. Guys are often called fags.