The Korea Herald

지나쌤

KCC to ramp up monitoring of illegal Internet postings

By Korea Herald

Published : Sept. 28, 2012 - 19:54

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The Korea Communications Commission announced Friday a series of preventive measures on the online real-name system Friday, saying that it will double monitoring of illegal Internet postings to twice a week.

Following a meeting arranged by the Prime Minister’s Office, the commission said it will also publicize the current state of illegal postings and its countermeasures put in place by the Internet operators.

It also said the law that currently states the online service provider’s responsibility to practice their own temporary measures ― such as blocking the online post for 30 days ― will be revised by the commission as early as October.

“The matter will be automatically reported to our affiliated agency if the claim filer and the Internet operator can’t reach an agreement within 30 days following the revision,” said Park Jae-moon, director-general of network policy at the KCC.

A hotline responsible for taking reports involving the malicious and illegal online posts will also be strengthened by the Korea Communications Standards Commission and related firms, said its officials.

The figure of workers at the state organization dealing with defamation of character involving harsh online comments will be increased to 25 from the current five.

Those who become victims of such cyber crimes could also file for compensation if they conclude that the online site operator did not deal “appropriately” regarding the debated postings.

The government devised those measures as the Constitutional Court ruled last month that the online real-name system was unconstitutional.

The decision, unanimously agreed upon by the eight-member court, went against the government’s introduction of the real-name system on the web in 2007 in a bid to block malicious postings and comments.

Stating that the number of malicious postings did not see a significant drop since its introduction in 2007, the court said the new system instead forced local online users to use overseas sites for such comments.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)