[Foundation-l] South Korean Government's regulations on real name for Internet

Puzzlet Chung puzzlet at gmail.com
Fri Apr 10 18:42:25 UTC 2009


On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>> RYU Cheol wrote:
>>> We have some servers in Seoul, Korea, which are donated by Yahoo,
>>> right? (I'm not sure, let me know) Then it's a web site in South
>>> Korea.
>>
>> Those servers are no longer being used to serve the website, they're
>> just being used for a few miscellaneous tasks. We're planning to move
>> all remaining operations in Korea to Florida, and to return the
>> servers to Yahoo. These plans can be hurried up if it's necessary for
>> legal reasons.
>>
>> Is there an English translation of the law in question, available on
>> the web?
>
> Answering my own question:
>
> http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/PrivLRes/2005/2.html
>
> Article 55 appears to be relevant:
>
> (1) The Minister of Information and Communication may request the
> information and communications service providers, etc. (in this
> Article, including any person falling under a case where the
> provisions of Article 58 apply mutatis mutandis) to submit related
> goods and documents, etc., if it is necessary to enforce this Act.
>
> From Article 2:
>
>  3. "Information and communications service providers" shall mean the
> operators of telecommunications as prescribed in Article 2 (1) 1 of
> the Telecommunications Business Act and other persons who provide
> information or intermediate information services for profit utilizing
> the services rendered by the telecommunications service providers;
>
> From the Telecommunications Business Act:
> <http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/Legislation/Korea/BusinessAct.htm>
>
>  1.the term "telecommunications business operator" means a person who
> provides telecommunications service with holding the relevant license
> or making a registration or report under this Act"
>
> Article 58:
>
> (1) The provisions of Articles 22 through 32 shall apply mutatis
> mutandis where any person prescribed by the Presidential Decree, from
> among other persons than the information and communications service
> provider, who provides goods or services, collects, utilizes or
> provides the personal information of customers of his/her goods or
> services. In this case, the "information and communications service
> provider" and the "information and communications service providers,
> etc." shall be deemed the "providers of goods or services," and the
> "user" shall be deemed the "customer of goods or services," respectively.
>
>
> So I guess the question is then, whether Wikimedia is prescribed by
> the Presidential Decree. Google would qualify under the definition in
> article 2, since they are for-profit. We would need to come under
> article 58 if we were to be subject to this legislation.
>
> In any case, there are the usual difficulties of international
> jurisdiction, as amply demonstrated by the court cases against us in
> Germany. Unlike Google, Wikimedia would have the option of ignoring
> any decision by the Korean courts. But the government could easily
> retaliate by DNS poisoning if it came to that.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
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The law translated there is outdated as it had been amended nine times
from then. The article under question is now Article 44-5, and it goes
like follows: (I'm not good at translating legal documents)

(1) In order to install and operate bullet-in board, Any person
provided for in the following Subparagraphs shall manage to provide
methods and processes to identify the users of that bullet-in board.
(called "personal identification management")
1. The national government, local governments, public services,
[similar kind of entities] as provided in [law titles].
2. Information and communications service providers, whose information
and communications service it provides has the daily users over 100
thousands, and is under the provisions as prescribed by the
Presidential Decree.

"Bullet-in board" is defined as "computer program or technical device
with which users can publish code, text, voice, sound, or video on the
public using the web, regardless of the name," and "information and
communications service" and its "provider" are defined exactly same as
the older law.


And the Article 30 of the corresponding Presidential Decree states the
criteria as follows:

1. Those who are "under the provisions as prescribed by the
Presidential Decree" stated in the Article 44-5 (1) 2 shall mean the
information and communications service provider whose average users
had been above 100 thousands, during the last three month of the
preceding year.
2. Korea Communications Commission shall publicly announce the subject
to the Article 44-5 Paragraph 1, and the due for the preparatory and
executive process for the personal identification management as
prescribed in the Article, by posting on the internet website.


This year, 153 domains are obligated to provide "personal
identification management," all of them are websites for either
commercial company or public broadcasting service.



For those who can read Korean, it's called 정보통신망 이용촉진 및 정보보호 등에 관한 법률
시행령 and can be found in http://www.klaw.go.kr/

The announcement from Korea Communications Commission this year can be
found in http://www.kcc.go.kr/user.do?mode=view&page=P05020000&dc=K05020000&boardId=1041&boardSeq=6647



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