Real-name system for Internet users
A case on online rumors
On July 23, 2011, two high speed trains derailed each other. Four cars fell off the viaduct when they travelling on the Yongtaiwen railway line collided with the viaduct in the suburbs of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China. In the accident, 40 people were killed, leaving at least 192 injured, 12 of whom were severely harmed injuries. This became a hotly debated topic in China. [1] This was also the first time the Internet celebrity Huohuo Qin decided to create a fake news report to attract more attention on the Internet. Qin had 500 followers on Weibo (one of the most popular online news and social networking apps in China) at the time. After he published the fake news report about foreign victims being able to unfairly receive more compensation than Chinese victims, the number of his followers increased from 500 to 2,000 within 2 hours. Obviously, Qin’s post about an Italian passenger who received 30 million Euros in compensation from the Chinese government was totally a rumor. But he started to enjoy the feeling of getting attention from other Internet users and it seemed that people are willing to read about the dark side of the world.
Of course, this is not the end to Qin’s story. In September 2013, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the P. R. C. published the details on Qin’s conviction of Internet defamation, which is a crime that involves making use of defamatory information to insult or slander others online with the same information having been viewed more than 5,000 times or reported by other Internet users more than 500 times and can lead to charges of libel. [2] In that same month, Chinese Internet celebrity Huohuo Qin was arrested because of his use of defamatory information and creation of a public disturbance.
Many observers think Qin’s case marks when the Chinese government started to crack down on free speech. As one of the rumormongers, Qin was just the fall guy due to the government’s selective enforcement of the law. Some Chinese Internet users are concerned that government involvement and censorship may damage their right to free speech. However, others believe that the power of the government could be the method used to frighten other rumormongers.
Censorship and the Real Name System in China
Although the relevant departments didn’t publish any details on the conviction of Internet defamation until September 2013, censorship was applied 20 years ago when many Chinese Internet users started to receive their first personal computers. At the time, the regulation of the Internet was more about restricting pornographic content and sensitive political issues online. Nowadays, as the most popular platform has changed from the computer to the smart phone, this policy has changed as well.
In 2010, the Chinese government established its first law about a real name system for Internet users, which claims that anyone 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 center. The identification credentials here mainly refer to the phone number and the resident identity card number. The ID card is the official certificate verifying one’s identity as a Chinese citizen. Also, due to another real name system implemented for mobile phone users, a phone number is equal to an identity certificate. So it is not difficult for the government to learn about your real identity if you spread defamatory information online. Although people change their nicknames on Weibo all the time, under the glasses of the real name system, everyone is naked. The Chinese government’s control over free speech is mainly manifested in social media and other content based websites. It could cost you more than a day to register an account and post a video on YOUKU (one of the most popular video websites in China), because you need to upload the picture of your resident identity card first and wait for it to undergo examination (Pic 1). Users are not allowed to post anything until their personal information is verified by the website.
Pic 1: The YOUKU webpage for users to fill out their personal information,
including a picture of their ID card
When looking through other cases of online defamation around the world, things occur differently because of differences in legal systems and public opinion. So is a real name system an effective solution to solving this problem? In 2009, a Canadian model Liskula Cohen sued Google because an anonymous blogger using Google Blog slurred her as a skank, a hag, and so on. Cohen won the lawsuit in the end and Google was required to provide the IP address and e-mail address of the rumormonger as well as close the blog. [3] As we can see, on the one hand, civil lawsuits are a way to punish rumormongers, but when the plaintiff is not an individual but the government, it becomes a criminal case. That is why many legal experts have questioned the validity of Qin’s case.
On the other hand, asking Internet users to upload pictures of their ID cards is more about control than finding the rumormonger after the rumor has spread. It is just like the mechanism that Foucault describes in The Eye of Power. An architecture like the Panopticon with a center tower that monitors everyone surrounding it, shows the power of surveillance. However, loopholes still exist, as it is not very difficult to make a fake ID online if you can get a SIM card outside of the legal market.
Online defamation is not the only reason why the Chinese government wants to apply a real name system. It is about gaining more control over free speech—for example, banned content could be directly deleted from social media and the user who posted the banned content could be warned or even have their account deleted. Due to the political system and the relationship between the Chinese government and companies, this is easy to achieve. Since April 13, 2018, Weibo said it has removed “homosexual” content from its popular micro-blogging platform, prompting a storm of online protests on Saturday under the hashtag “I am gay.” [4] Many people also reposted an article called Hello Weibo, I’m Gay. But several hours after these reposts, many people found the article could not be viewed anymore because it had been deleted completely. (Pic 2) Chinese Internet users call this kind of situation a 404.
Pic 2: The page showing that users couldn’t read the article any longer because the content is banned
Just like when you type in the URL of a website, and the page “404 not found” pops up, the content that the Chinese government doesn’t want you to read will disappear.
Although the policies on censorship and the real name system in China seem to be very tough, it is quite impossible to realize the degree to which the suppression of ideas is applied because of the variety of information platforms.
A Case Study on the Failure of the Real Name System in South Korea
China is not the only country in the world that has tried to implement a real name system on a national scale. The South Korean government was the first to make the decision to implement a real name system in the world. From 2005 to 2012, after 7 years of struggle, the system was rejected by the court in the end because the real name policy infringes upon the users’ right to free speech, along with the operators’ freedom of speech.
To learn from failure, there are three main reasons we can’t ignore. First of all, the policy was only applied on those platforms where the page views were more than 300 thousand a day. After 2009, a famous Korean actress committed suicide because of online defamation. The South Korean government changed the policy by decreasing the standard for the number of page views on these platforms from 300 thousand to 100 thousand. But the outcome of this measure was that an increasing number of small websites emerged. Also, because foreign companies like Facebook rejected applying this policy on their products, the local companies were surely at a greater disadvantage than the foreign companies in terms of market competition.
Secondly, the South Korean government lost public trust because they were not able to protect the personal information collected by the websites and apps. In 2011, the personal information of more than 35 million internet users was exposed when these platforms applied a real name system. It was one of the immediate reasons why president Lee Myung-bak decided to reconsider the policy on the real name system in 2011. Unless the related regulation and technology is developed before the policy is implemented, the legal rights of Internet users cannot be protected.
Finally, the owners of the South Korean Internet platforms made use of many extreme measures to avoid applying real name system in their companies—for example, many websites encouraged users to use fake national identities in order to compete with other companies like Facebook. This shows that although the original purpose of the policy was to prevent rumors and slander, the disadvantages far outweighed the benefits. Complaints from the public were heard everywhere. [5]
All in all, the real name system in South Korea was doomed to fail due to the unequal treatment of local platforms and foreign companies, technical flaws and incomplete regulations, which warns us that being unsympathetic to public opinion is a huge mistake. We should weigh the advantages and disadvantages first rather than spending time and money on useless items.
The Influence and Future Development of Real Name Systems
The Chinese real name system was first applied in matchmaking websites. The Ministry of Civil Affairs formulated the related regulations in order to prevent fraud on matchmaking websites. All of the marriage seekers needed to provide their identifying information. The employees of these websites are required to carefully verify the personal information provided by the users. Before the verification process is completed, their information can’t be viewed by other users. But the truth is the regulation has practically had no function for a long time. (Pic 3) Most matchmaking websites let their users register without providing any official identification. Online matchmaking service platforms answer thousands of complaint calls about marital fraud every day.
Only online news and social networking platforms strictly execute the policy. It is obvious that free speech is the top priority in the eyes of the government. No matter whether the purpose is to pursue political stability or protect Internet users, unequal treatment happens just like what South Korean government did
Pic 3: Page of a famous Chinese matchmaking website. It claims that registration can be finished within 1 min and no official certificates are required.
several years ago. This unequal treatment may lead to two completely different results. The first one is that more employees will need to be hired to improve the censorship on all kinds of platforms and eliminate unequal conditions. Big companies like Weibo have about 1,000 employees who read and delete sensitive content. So for other platforms, is it possible for them to spend so much money on labor expenses? Will the government offer subsidies to support the complete implementation of the system? The second one is that the real name system will only be applied on particular platforms, such as matchmaking websites, trading platforms, etc. However, since sensitive content can be deleted anyway, it doesn’t matter whether the name is real or not. Many Internet users delete their old accounts and register new ones after they post sensitive content. Strict regulations may lead to the results being the opposite of what one wishes. As for how to control online rumors, looking for a legal approach could be the solution after the legal knowledge of citizens is improved.
Free speech is the essential measure of a government’s confidence. Although the Chinese government has blocked out many foreign companies in recent years, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, as the Chinese economy and soft power develops, the situation will be gradually defused within 10 years. 772 million Chinese Internet users have the legal right and ability to exercise their free speech within the law.
[1] “China bullet train crash ’caused by design flaws’” BBC News. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-16345592 (December 28, 2011).
[2] “China cracks down on social media with threat of jail for online rumours” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/10/china-social-media-jail-rumours (September 10, 2013).
[3] “Liskula Cohen: A “Model” Hero in Google Lawsuit Win” PC World. https://www.pcworld.com/article/170437/Liskula_Cohen_A_Model_Hero_in_Google_Lawsuit_Win.html (August 19, 2009).
[4] “China’s Weibo bans homosexual content” DW.com. http://www.dw.com/en/chinas-weibo-bans-homosexual-content/a-43391182 (April 18, 2018).
[5] David Caragliano, “Real Names and Responsible Speech: The Cases of South Korea, China, and Facebook” YaleJournal.org. http://yalejournal.org/article_post/real-names-and-responsible-speech-the-cases-of-south-korea-china-and-facebook/ (May 21, 2013).
