[Foundation-l] Korean Wikipedians charged with "criminal defamation:" a potential threat of censorship

[Puzzlet Chung]

I'm afraid not.

(And I forgot to introduce myself - I'm [[ko:User:PuzzletChung]], a
bureaucrat from kowiki.)

2010/12/22 Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>:
> Puzzlet - How unfortunate.  Is there a lawyer available to advise the
> Wikipedians?   - SJ
>
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:56 PM, Puzzlet Chung <puzzlet at gmail.com> wrote:
>> At most four Korean Wikipedians are charged with defamation of Song
>> Young-gil, the Mayor of Incheon Metropolitan City.
>>
>> According to the contributors, the prosecution is upon the Song's own
>> request, and is going to be over publicizing a fabricated sex scandal
>> in the article about him and (semi-)protecting it.  The text in
>> question is merely a sum-up of various reports about the speculations
>> eventually found to be a hoax.  Non-logged-in user(s) from various IP
>> addresses have tried to remove the whole controversy section,
>> including not only the scandal but other arguments about him,
>> replacing it with personal contrary comments and legal threats.  The
>> edits are consequently reverted by some users and rollbacked by one
>> administrator.  The admin, [[ko:User:Kys951]], is also accused of
>> being an abettor just because he is an admin.
>>
>> In the South Korean legal system, criminal defamation is partially a
>> "crime upon complaint," (친고죄/親告罪) which becomes irrelevant to be a
>> crime when the complainant chose to withdraw the case.  (Note that I'm
>> not a specialist of law, especially in English terminology.)  The
>> police of Southeastern Incheon thought the case itself is too
>> insignificant to be a criminal case and tried to persuade him to
>> withdraw it, only to be declined.
>>
>> Song has reportedly demanded the admin to remove the paragraph in
>> exchange for fixing the charge, which is definitely not the way how
>> Wikipedia works.
>>
>> Another concern about this incident is that this could happen to every
>> bit of contribution to the project.  South Korean government had been
>> censoring any scribble on the web they think beneficial to North
>> Korea,[2] and for later on, anything they think "fraudulent" whenever
>> the state is in "threat," according to an exclusive report.[3]
>>
>> [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ko/w/index.php?title=%EC%86%A1%EC%98%81%EA%B8%B8&diff=5832689
>> [2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/shame_on_democratic_south_korea_for_censoring_face.php
>> [3] http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/economy/it/455022.html
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
>
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