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.

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