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

[Thomas Dalton]

I expect a good lawyer can be found. The WMF might be able to help
with that, they have lots of useful contacts. If even the police
didn't think there is much of a case, they must stand a very good
chance of winning the case. While it will surely be a very stressful
and unpleasant experience for the Wikipedians concerned, a victory in
a case like this could set a very useful legal precedent (both in
South Korea and internationally).

On 22 December 2010 05:18, Puzzlet Chung <puzzlet at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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