South Korea To Fine Portals If Their Users Upload Porn
from the that's-gonna-backfire dept
While we have problems with plenty of US laws when it comes to innovation and the technology industry, one thing this country has gotten right is making sure that service providers usually aren't blamed for the actions of their users. Between the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA and section 230 of the CDA (both of which are mostly awful laws other than those small points within them), it seems that our laws recognize that an individual who does something on the site of an online service provider is responsible for those actions, rather than the service itself. This makes plenty of sense. You don't blame the phone company when someone uses a phone to commit a crime. You don't blame the highway department when a getaway car drives off on the highway. You blame whoever actually committed the crime. There have been efforts underway in the US to change this -- mainly because the service providers are easier to find and they often have a lot more money -- but that doesn't make it right.Other countries haven't been as clear on this, and it appears some are going in the opposite direction. South Korea is looking to start fining web portals that make pornographic content available. Fines will also go to those who uploaded it, but clearly this law is targeted at the service providers. Apparently, explaining to the government that it's pretty much impossible to manually check every uploaded video isn't particularly convincing, as the gov't appears to have responded with "hire more people." Somehow, I get the feeling this won't do much to actually stop porn online, but could make things more difficult for various web portals in South Korea.
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Filed Under: liability, portals, south korea
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I've been trying to keep porn out of my home network lately, as the in-laws have been staying with us for the last week or so - her younger brother was hitting all kinds of porn sites.
Not that I'm opposed really, but he was doing it on my kid's PC and had no regard to any site - ended up getting the thing infected, etc...
It's dang near impossible to block it all.
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I does seem a bit pointless
Implementing laws that are impossible to comply with isn't going to work. Basically they are just passing the buck. The politicians want to do something about porn but can't think of any solutions that are really viable. So they pass a law that says to the ISPs, "It's your problem. Fix it or else."
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The real reason
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"Hire more people"
I hope their whole internet crashes into nothingness because nobody can bear the cost to provide a connection to users because of the overhead this will cause.
That should teach the blasted government there.
I will bet you the jerks in their government there don't have their internet access uploads monitored like this.
Probably some provision that exempts the government from having to check their own network.
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But hey,
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top 10 traits of 1st World Countries
1) Porn producers
2) ...What was I talking about again?
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Embedded Fines
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