*Since I separated my first draft Kin Jin Young teacher suggested I should update my whole first draft.
Computers are parts of human beings' life and their power is becoming so higher that they seep into our practical life and try to control all the aspects of our life. Thinking about, human use them to buy books, clothes, and foods, to book flight, train and movie tickets, and to watch news, TV shows, movies, cartoons and even cyber lectures. Furthermore, as computers are installed in various devices such as smart phones, notebooks, or other electric devices, people can meet computers more frequently ever. Namely, computers equals our life. However, as computers are overwhelming human beings' life, negative sides of the computers are coming to the surface.The drawbacks are serious enough to affect the society itself negatively and hurt the internet-users intensely. So, recently, arguments about the revival of network real-name system has appeared as an effective solution. However, like the old saying : Overdone is worse than undone, the network system cannot solve the cyber problems but even make other problems. Thus, the network real-name system should not be revived as a key solution to current cyber problems.
Since students who didn't use computer in 2002 up to 2004 don't know about network real-name system and to clarify its definition, a brief explanation of the network real-name is needed. According to wikipedia, the real-name system is defined as "a system in which when a user who wants to register an account on a blog, website or bulletin board system, is required to offer identification credentials including their legal name to the network service centre." Namely, this is a system that force the internet users to approve their actual identification such as their real names and register. Korea has exerted this system before. The first format of this system was specified in Public Election and Election Malpractice Prevention Act in 2004, which forced the both users and internet press to approve their identification when they updated any comments about election on the websites so that active communication on the internet between users themselves has been halted, especially political communication. Since June 28, 2009, thirty-five Korean websites have implemented a name-registration system pursuant to the newly amended Information and Communications Network Act enacted after suicide of Choi Jin-Sil. As a result of Choi Jin-Sil law, websites exerting this system has been increased to 100. However, on August 23, 2012, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled that the system is unconstitutional, mentioning provision's violation of freedom of speech in cyberplace and its inefficiency. Through the brief history about the system, we can notice this system has experienced serious failure and we must not revive this failure again.
"Look at the failure of South Korea. The freedom of anonymous speech is necessary to political dissidence and whistle-blowing from the inside. Network real-name system is a silly idea." New York Times argued. We have to know that this "silly"system can facilitate the corruption of actual democracy and kick-start dictatorship, however, reversely, anonymity can make free communication among public. Post-election uprising that happened in Iran in 2009 is the case. According to a statistic from Betanews, approximately 98 percent of Iranians use twitter and according to an article, Network Real-Name System Is to be dead, Iranians could last and inform their uprising to the world using twitter and youtube,despite their government's strong censorship. How could they achieve this "twitter revolution" ? Many people owed this accomplishment to nonexistence of real-name system on twitter and youtube That's because they could join these sites freely while avoiding the government's censorship. Moreover, a network protecting foundation recall that offline anonymity to foster political speech has been upheld as a constitutional right in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n 514 U.S. 334, 357 (1995) with the resounding assertion that:
“Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus
exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First
Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from
retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an
intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused
when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its
nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in
general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free
speech than to the dangers of its misuse.”
From these examples we can say : If you want to remove "dictatorship", you have to remove "real-name systme" first!
Since Lilian Edwards and Derek McAuely from What's in a Name? Real-Name Policies and Social Networks said at a personal level, many users find a real name policy is best at annoyance and at worst a potential bar on online participation and at a practical level, the real-name policy can damage public's security, we have to prevent the real-name system from walking around our "networking" streets.
Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, can you guess any common things among these three website? It seems difficult to find but if you try to make a ID in these websites you find easily that they are adopting anonymity system. According to an article, The Country of Smartphone is Now Seeking for a New Way to Deal With Network Real-Name System, it said "It is a trend that huge websites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are adopting anonymity system instead of network real-name system. This means "Anonymity" in websites has become popular among users." The main reason these websites use the anonymity system is they are scared about leaking users' personal information. In 2009, after exerting network real-name system, Korea was damaged seriously by leakage of personal information. According to an article, 35million Cyworld, Nate usuers' information hacked, approximately 35 million users' personal information that had been stored on the website was leaked. The damage was really huge because the real-name system made the website store personal information easily. The information was stored automatically to the website. Kim Eul Dong, a member of National Assembly, criticized "President Lee Myung Bak's personal information has been leaked and other members of National Assembly's personal information including mine have been revealed too." Also, Jeon Hye Suk, a member of National Assembly, blamed "We introduced this system to prevent malicious comments on the cyber place,however, due to this system, all public's personal information is to be leaked. We have to think about abolishing it." To the two women, the name naming system was a shortcut sending their personal information to those who they didn't know. Internet real-name system can be a good shortcut to hackers who want to use others' personal information in malicious ways. We have to protect users' information from this "shortcut". Do you want to send your personal identification including your family's identification to the unknown overseas or do you want to keep your identification with your "fake" name?
Dcinside, a famous Korean portal site, did a poll against 5027 internet users. The poll's question was this : Do you agree that network real-name system can reduce malicious comments on cyber place? Surprisingly, around 64 percent(3217 people) of the users said "no" while less than half of the users expected this system had effects. The expectation of those of 64 percent became true. According to a statistic, Analysis of Network Real-Name System's Effect in 2008, done by Korea Broadcasting and Communication Commission, from Daum Agora, malicious comments on board was 8.3 percent in 2007. However, the percent of the comments increased to 14.1 in 2008. Also, percent of malicious comments on Moneyside has been increased from 8.2 in 2007 to 12.2 in 2008. Moreover, the ratio of malicious comments on DCinside message board has been increased too, from 9.1 in 2007 to 14.3 in 2008. Seo Gab Won, a member of Culture, Sports, Tourism, and Broadcasting and Communication Commission, argued that "Regulations like name naming system which press the freedom of expression now prove themselves to be hard to reduce malicious comments on the cyber place. This system rather reduce free political and social communication forum." Like his saying, the network real-name system has no efficiency on reducing malicious comments at all.
Lastly, the internet real-name system has constitutional problem that this can violate both users' and internet press's freedom of expression. On August 23, 2012, the Constitutional Court of Korea decided that the real-name system done on various portal sites in Korea is unconstitutional, mentioning the provisions of violation on freedom of expression.
The Constitutional Court said,
The system does not seem to have been beneficial to the public. Despite the enforcement of the system, the number of illegal or malicious postings online has not decreased. Instead, users moved to foreign Websites and the system became discriminatory against domestic operators. It also prevented foreigners who didn’t have a resident registration number here from expressing their opinions online.
A research paper, Constitutional Research on Real-Name System, done by Hanyang university researchers, proved the violation on the freedom of expression assaying each laws related to the real-name system, particularly Public Election Act. Here's some part of the Act:
Public Election Act, the 82 number 6(In 2004)
1)If the internet-users want to update their comments a bout election on websites or cyber bulletin boards, they have to authenticate their identification, including their real name and registration number.
2)This act might be applied to websites that candidates make but since in this case it's just informal form one can avoid authenticating process.
3,4)The Ministry of Government Administration and people selected according to Home Affairs and the use and protection of credit information act will authenticate the internet-users' identification.
5) If the internet-users obey this act, their comments on websites will be eliminated and they will no longer update their ideas on the internet websites."
Public Election Act, the 261 number 1(In 2004)
"Unless the internet press take any step, the press will be punished with 10 million won penalty."
With these laws, people could no longer express their political ideas freely. This means that free political and social communication forum can be reduced due to this system. What if the freedom of political expression of users are violated by this system? As I mentioned on narration, Iranian's twitter revolution using their anonymity could have not existed. Also, huge portal sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube could have not been popularized. Also, with these laws, focusing on Public Election Act, the 261 number 1, internet press can be damaged. Press is basically run by various ideas of public. Anonymity can make public's idea various enough. With anonymity, they can blame candidates, politicians or other celebrities but without this, they cannot do anything. Thus, the real-name system can block communication between press and public so that the freedom of press's expression also be pressed too.
Whether we view the naming system in the aspects of social protection or constitutional infraction, one thing becomes explicitly true : We have to put our hands away from the "silly" naming system!
Explicitly my argument doesn't consider the real-name system in the aspect of social protection, even though the effect is minimum. There are many people who oppose to my argument such as Song Guangxing and Yang Pingfang. Song Guangxing and Yang Pingfang argued that "by using network real-name system, we can encourage the netizens to restrict their actions more strictly, and to be more responsible for their network speeches and to act more rationally and it is helpful for forming responsible citizen consciousness, raising the level of social hazard, reducing network crimes, and finally purifying the environment of the Internet." in their research paper, The Influence of Network Real-Name System on the Management of Internet Public Opinion. However, there's no evidence that show effective reduction of cyber problems. Rather, cyber problems has been increased after exertion of the naming system.. According to a statistic from Broadcasting and Communication Commission, percentage of malicious comments on Daum Agora, Moneyside, and Dcinside has been increased. Thus, the naming system on the internet has no effect on solving any cyber problems rather this system encourage cyber problems in certain websites. Also Song Guangxing and Yang Pingfang argued that "It is also helpful for lowering the expense of dealing with releasing false information on the Internet and infringing on people's privacy." However we cannot sure that anonymity system has been irritated by expense of dealing with those things. Frankly speaking, we can expect reversed situation : Rather the real-name system will irritate people with expense of strengthening security process. The cost of strengthening is much more than that of expense of dealing with false information and restriction on public's privacy. Mr.Schmidt,the chairman of Google, supported for the use of real identities . Google wants to know more about its users because this information is valuable to advertisers and other business.
"If we knew that it was a real person, ten we could sort of hold them accountable, we could check them, we could give them tings, we could, you know, bill them; you know, we could have credit cards and so forth and so on, there are all sorts of reasons," he was quoted as saying in Edinburgh. He is saying that he stores users' identifications to make it easy for the company to understand their customers. However, it is really risk-taking. What if Google were hacked by someone? What if the hackers hacked most of the users' identification? What if their identification are all related to their family's and friend's identification? Serious problems will be brought about. Thus, the "silly" naming system must not play a role in cyber place ever.
It is not difficult to find cyber problems around us. It is easier to find malicious comments right around us. So recently discussion about the revival of network real-name system has appeared more than past. Looking at Iranian "Twitter Revolution" in 2009, we can know the power of anonymity, nonexistence of network real-name system. New York Times regarded Korean name naming system as a "silly" system. This newspaper criticized this system sharply mentioning relation between this system and dictatorship. Reversely, like Song Guanxing and Yang Pingfang, some regard this system as a effective social protection. In part, I agree that this system contributed to protection to some extent; but it is minimum. However, what we have to focus on is that this system generated social anxiety and didn't contribute to reduction of cyber problems and freedom of public's and press's expression. The real-name system is no longer a way of social protection, rather it can damage our society in the future. If we abolish the real-name system in our society completely, we will not worry about leakage of our identification to China or East Europe who we don't know. We will freely express our opinion about irrational policies, bad politicians and elections. We will make true democracy from removing this system. Lastly, it can contribute to make healthier cyber culture. "Do you want computers to know your whole identification?"or "Do you want to make your computer like "parents" who care all aspects of you?" If you want neither of them, you have to keep this in mind : Computers are computer. You are you. You cannot leave whole -yourself to computer as you do to your parents. Computers will betrayal you!
