Mandatory ICRA/PICS in South Korea ( was Re: [LINK] IT: Essay: ICRA - Censoring The World, Round 2

[Irene Graham]

On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 03:51:47 +1100 (EST) David Goldstein
<goldstein_david@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>Oh dear, more scaremongering from Seth. Seth, if there is this desire
>to use something like ICRA to filter content, why is there no
>movement towards it? 

There's not only a "movement" towards it, the South Korean Government apparently
enacted a law, effective 1 July 2001, mandating self-rating with ICRA labels and
blocking of content with particular labels by ISPs, Internet cafes, public
libraries and schools.

The law is named the "Internet Content Filtering Ordinance".

>And as has been demonstrated, governments who
>wish to filter online content can easily do so, with varying degrees
>of success, and they use nothing based on PICS.

If you build a new censorship tool governments will use it, as well as any means
they had before.

Apparently, the SK Government is using a variety of means to block sites
including:
- sites in a list of over 120,000 that had been compiled by the government
censorship authority; 
- sites rated objectionable/unsuitable (whatever) under a regime of compulsory
self-rating by website providers; and 
-sites containing words in a control list of keywords.

For more detail visit:

- Alert and Background Information issued by the International Gay and Lesbian
Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), 23 Aug 2001
http://www.iglhrc.org/world/ne_asia/Korea2001Aug.html
	"The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) of the Republic
of Korea (South Korea) recently adopted an internet content rating system 
...
On April 24, 2001, the Information and Communications Ethics Committee  (ICEC)
released its "Criteria for Indecent Internet Sites", officially  classifying
homosexuality in the category of 'obscenity and perversion'. With this rating,
the ICEC effectively called for the removal of gay-related material from
virtually all websites based in Korea.
...
When activists from [LGADD] protested to the ICEC, the ICEC claimed that the
ratings were based on the standards of the Internet Content Rating Association
(ICRA), an international, independent organization providing a system of 'open
and objective' labelling of content while maintaining standards of free speech
on the internet. ..."

Stop Korean Online Censorship
http://www.freeonline.or.kr/english/index.html

Censorship of Gay sites continues on South Korean Internet, Association for
Progressive Communications, 5 Mar 2002
http://www.apc.org/english/news/fulltext.shtml?sh_itm=c81c96a8a8a48493a1f3d01d72b5095b

120,000 Internet Sites Blacklisted, Kim Deok-hyun, The Korea Times, 3 May 2001
http://www.hankooki.com/kt_tech/200105/t2001050217201245110.htm

Internet Filtering Ordinance Spurs New Debate, Kim Deok-hyun, Korea Times, 23
Apr 2001
http://www.hankooki.com/kt_tech/200104/t2001042316411745110.htm

>This is the typical scaremongering from people who want to deny
>people the ability to filter out the content they do not wish to see.

Nonsense. If you build a censorship tool, governments will use it.

Irene