Myth and Reality: Too Little or Too Much Freedom for Mainland Netizens

The cyberspace has been likened by many to be the “wild wild West,” unruly to be tamed. Yet the great firewall of the Chinese Government has pinned down and filtered many freewheeling minds and spirits. When we are confronted with the Orwellian nightmare of the Big Brother overseeing us, many may have overlooked that Little Brothers are everywhere. With the rise of blogs, discussion boards, and Youtube, we may become targets of false allegations or our movements and gestures may have been captured by modern technology at any moment to be broadcast on the Internet for a public trial of millions to watch and to criticize. The use of the Internet to achieve social shaming, monitoring and ostracism seem to be prevalent in Chinese society. The year 2007 had been marked by several Internet scandals in China touching on defamation and privacy. These included a Peking University female gradate who allegedly had gone naked to raise fund while she was studying in North America. A stepmother was alleged to torture her stepdaughter to hospitalization. Both turned out to be blatant lies. On the other hand, in another category of cases, the greater the truth, the greater the libel. Witch hunting had been going on to target and expose details of a woman engaging in extra marital affairs, and against a nurse deriving pleasure from torturing a kitten. All the individuals concerned have little legal recourse to protect their reputation and privacy facing unwilling exposure or even cyber bullying on the Internet. Though the Internet may have given “the ultimate in free speech by giving voice to millions,” many have fallen into victims of false speech and privacy violations. Thus, the proposed paper will look at the current legal position in China, and its inadequacy in the area of defamation and privacy violations. It argues for a system of notice and take down on internet service providers in the above two areas.

Anne Cheung is arguing that a form of liability must be enforced regarding cyberbullying, libel and fraud online according to Article 38 of the PRC Constitution. ISPs have a duty to remove unlawful materials, inform authorities and keep records of violators – does this happen? Regarding defamation, PRC law is quite similar to common law. Gao Xiaosong vs. Yahoo! (2005), Chen Tangfa vs. Hangzhou Blogcn (2005) and Zhang Keke vs. Tianya (2008) are key precedents. Gao was a music producer who had mistreated his manager, who revealed information about Gao on Yahoo!. Professor Chen was libeled by a student on Blogcn. Zhang Keke is a popular teenage singer who was slandered on Tianya, which refused to reveal information on those who wrote the defamatory statements. The last case was the only one where the court ruled that Keke did not have a right to the information. In 2007, a Chinese student in Canada went naked to raise money. She demanded ISPs remove the photos of her nudity, but they said they could not prevent it from being reposted.

On privacy: egao is defined as “a malicious and reckless attack through visual, audio, video, textual forms”, such as Little Fatty and Shanghai Lovers. Little Fatty was photoshopped into Brokeback Mountain and Da Vinci Code movie posters and other satire. The Shanghai Lovers were photographed kissing in the subway, and also mocked online. Another phenomenon concerning privacy is the “human flesh search engine”. In one example, a woman who was seen online torturing a kitten was identified, harassed and eventually lost her job as a result. In another, a man was accused of being an unfaithful husband. His house was graffiti’ed and he also lost his job.

A third type of privacy violations involves students. The first example is the “very yellow, very violent” incident. A student on CCTV used this phrase to describe the Internet, and was soon a hot topic of ridicule. The other case is Grace Wang, who was caught in the middle of the Tibet protests at Duke University.

She ended by pointing to the various attempts governments around the world have made to deal with these sorts of issues, such as the Communications Decency Act in the U.S.

This entry was posted Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under CIRC2008, Session 7. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.