SNU Requests Portals Remove “Dean’s Office Freedom”

by 깊은 구멍 속에 on June 17, 2011

From here:

I posted a few days ago about a video SNU students made protesting the privatization of their school by parodying a famous song.

Apparently the SNU administration has taken a rather negative stance to this video, demanding that Daum, Naver and Nate (Korea’s three major portal sites) remove the video because it constitutes libel. Unfortunately for the administration, however, this video is out there now and there is nothing the big 3 can do to take it back. Their efforts to suppress it have likely just fanned the fire of this video’s fame.

Someone should just teach them to laugh.

{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }

1 ecorn June 17, 2011 at 3:40 pm: When are the Old Guys in Suits (OGiS) going to understand that trying to surpress things they don’t like will just make it seem more subversive and therefore more attractive?
2 holterbarbour June 17, 2011 at 4:02 pm: As soon as they get every ounce of the respect they demand, dammit!
3 cmm June 17, 2011 at 4:27 pm: Awesome.
4 chiamattt June 17, 2011 at 4:39 pm: You four just made my day. Thanks.
5 chiamattt June 17, 2011 at 4:46 pm: You know, I think this is a really interesting situation. I get the feeling that a lot of people are starting to realize that if they post things on Youtube or Vimeo these draconian libel laws simply do not apply. Libel laws apply to Naver blogs, but don’t if you open up a wordpress or tumblr.

I’ll bet the OGiS are already starting to reminisce the days before the internet; when they could get whatever the hell they wanted done, and no one would know about it.
6 Fullslab June 17, 2011 at 5:59 pm: Isn’t there at least one waygookin they could single out and sue that works for Daum, Naver, or Nate?
7 Brendon Carr June 17, 2011 at 6:34 pm: I get the feeling that a lot of people are starting to realize that if they post things on Youtube or Vimeo these draconian libel laws simply do not apply. Libel laws apply to Naver blogs, but don’t if you open up a wordpress or tumblr.

If this is the realization people come to, they will be in for a rude awakening. Korea’s criminal defamation statute applies to the act of publication — the location of the server does not matter. So it’s not true that the law “simply [does] not apply” if one were to publish on YouTube or Vimeo, or WordPress or Tumblr.

Korea Inc. (government and powerful entities like Seoul National University) does have a problem when content is released to the wider net, and that is the operators of foreign-based publishing services generally don’t jump to the tune of the powerful and take stuff down simply because they’re told to do so without clear legal justification. So the huff-and-puff takedown demand by butthurt government officials doesn’t work. That’s a clear difference.

However, remember that Google’s web services are backed by a rather robust Korean local entity, and that makes services like Blogger and YouTube responsive to butthurt demands. Take a look at YouTube and you’ll see all kinds of content blocked there based on Korean government directive.
8 chiamattt June 17, 2011 at 6:52 pm: I didn’t mean to suggest it would cease being illegal. What I meant was that with services like vimeo, tumblr, wordpress, etc. signing up does not require a real name and citizen number; making knee jerk reactionary regulations less effective.
9 8675309 June 17, 2011 at 7:39 pm: When are the Old Guys in Suits (OGiS) going to understand that trying to surpress things they don’t like will just make it seem more subversive and therefore more attractive?

Just think of Korea, Inc. as a kind of China, Jr. or a China Lite, and everything they do and say will make sense. (Just wish Korea had the balls to provide “speedy trials” like they do in China — check this one out: this Chinese art student only had to wait seven months from committing a murder to his very public execution — appeals notwithstanding! Now that’s justice! http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/student-executed-for-peasant-murder-that-outraged-china-2294943.html)
10 exit86 June 17, 2011 at 9:31 pm: Wow! Now i want to check out this video, since SNu is p’od about it!
Yup, the more these dorks try to cover stuff up, the more it gets exposed.
11 roboseyo June 18, 2011 at 8:27 am: Classic example of the Streisand effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
12 DLBarch June 18, 2011 at 9:35 am: In the Korea context, one might also call this the Michael Breen effect: Big guy goes after little guy. Little guy fights back. Little guy gets media attention. Big guy back down. Big guy reveals himself to be a total prick.

Of course, in that case, we all know who the little guy was. I’ll let others recall for themselves who the total prick was.

DLB
13 R. Elgin June 19, 2011 at 3:14 pm: Thanks to the US/FTA, there is already a mechanism that allows the Ministry of Culture to issue a “recommendation” for action against an internet user in Korea, which the ISPs usually treat as a de facto order and cut off people’s internet access. I think most people can imagine how this can work against almost anyone.

There will likely be other efforts to muzzle information in Korea.
14 Brendon Carr June 19, 2011 at 4:00 pm: Elgin — The censorship-by-recommendation phenomenon is not new in any way to Korea, and certainly is not a product of the KORUS Free Trade Agreement. All that’s accomplished by inclusion of such a provision in the FTA is that American parties are granted by treaty the same rights to request action from the Ministry of Culture as Korea Inc. already enjoyed all along.

Now, I don’t personally agree with the idea that the Korean government ought to be able to ban users from the Internet at all, but it’s patently wrong to try to characterize it as being a product of the FTA.
15 조엘 June 20, 2011 at 8:19 am: Elgin – Brendon is right. I can think of instances of the censorship-by-recommendation going back to when I first came to Korea. The most prominent of which was the MIT’s censorship of blogs to prevent people from viewing the beheading of the Korean citizen Kim Seon Il.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=173798&rel_no=1
16 R. Elgin June 20, 2011 at 9:21 pm: Joel, I was originally referring to an article I found that talked about not censoring blogs but completely kicking users off-line without pretext and its connection to the FTA (per the link):

. . . it may be worth jumping halfway around the world to South Korea, which put in place a very strict copyright law last year, that included the ability to kick people off-line for accusations (not convictions) of file sharing. It’s worth noting, of course, that the reason South Korea put in place such a draconian copyright law was due to serious diplomatic pressure from the US as a part of a supposed “free trade” agreement between the two countries. It’s also worth pointing out that the trade agreement between South Korea and the US was, according to many, the basis for the initial draft of ACTA (though, obviously, it’s changed a lot since then).