On Wednesday last week, the
High Court in Seoul ruled in favour of a man who sued four major Internet
portals for failure to delete postings that defamed his character. Essentially
the lawsuit emanated from an original posting alleging the man caused his
pregnant partner to commit suicide by instigating the breakup of their
relationship. The posting was extended across various internet portals
attracting thousands of further defamatory comments culminating with his
personal details published online. The man was forced to leave his job and move
home.
The nub of the Seoul ruling
asserted that the portals were responsible for placing the postings in prime
locations and at the same time allowed the use of their search engines to
further propagate defamation. As such, the court ruled that “Internet portals
should decide whether the contents of a posting defames a person's character
and should either delete or block access to those postings if they do, even if
the person being targeted does not request that they be deleted.”
The Seoul case comes on the
back of several others highlighting the difficulties of inherent in social
networking and associated technologies and is of particular concern where young
people are involved. A Missouri woman pleaded not guilty a few weeks ago to
charges relating to an web hoax that led to the suicide of a 13 year old girl.
A boy in Brighton was given community service after admitting to homophobically
defaming a “friend” through Bebo, which resulted in a failed suicide attempt. There are countless other cases coming to
light.
As in the Seoul case, often the
dominant view is that portals and websites need to take responsibility for the
information posted on their sites. If the sites concerned are moderating
comments and postings, this is possible to achieve given intelligent and
responsible moderation, but nigh on impossible if no moderation is taking
place.
We do need effective, toothful
laws governing online conduct. We do need forcible safeguards. But rather than
getting hysterical and distracted by the roles and responsibilities of the
providers and portals, should we not instead be concentrating on our collective
responsibility to our young people and to each other? We have a duty as a
society to set good role models for our young citizens, to provide them with a
positive experience online and crucially, to help them help each other.
Online environments do foster
and harbour bullying, harassing, malign and malevolent behaviours, but so do
offline environments. Just as we put measures in place in the real world to
prevent and mitigate these behaviours, so must we introduce measures online to
prevent such conduct in the first instance. And who are the best people to set down web etiquettes and codes for young
people? Other young people.
Imagine the impact of an army of well-trained young people on the next net generation and how they might put to shame their flaming, spamming, abusive, craven, contemptuous bullying forbears.
Sources:
The Argus | USAToday | MSNBC | Digital Chosunilbo
~Sarah Dyer - Beatbullying's Creative Director
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