earticle

영어

The Internet has been used in Korea for over 20 years. So far, many laws have regulated the Internet environment in order to organize and control it, including the Act on Promotion of Information and Communication Network Utilization and Information Protection, etc., the Telecommunications Business Act, the Juvenile Protection Act, the Juvenile Sexual Protection Act, the Punishment of Sexual Crimes and Protection of Victims Act, the Sound Recording, Video Products and Games Software Act, the Broadcasting Act, etc. In particular, when ITRs was revised in 2012, Korea provided the final signature despite its regulation of content, which was considered to be in favor of regulating certain content. Furthermore, in Korea, there was an attempt in June 2007 to regulate malicious comments online by enforcing a limited personal certification system, but this was ruled as unconstitutional by the Court. At present, the Korea Communications Standards Commission is deliberating regarding Internet contents, which is ex post deliberation on illegal information with seeming unconstitutionality. However, it still lacks clarity because the ambiguous standards of “provisional measure or excision’ in Information and Communication Network Act 44-2 (2) give excessive burden to Internet service providers (ISPs) as to their decision. There are four types of models used for regulating the Internet: mandated, sanctioned, equal-proportion and voluntary regulations. Currently, the Korean structure is a sanctioned type in which ISP is hierarchically included in regulating the Internet. Since sanctioned regulation is hard to manage with the characteristics and efficiency of the Internet, however, it cannot but proceed to an equal-proportion model, in which there is a high necessity for nongovernmental participation such as self-governance organizations, etc. In this regard, the US Department of Commerce has decided not to extend the Internet address management agreement with ICANN, which expires on September 30, 2015, thus giving validity to a civilian-oriented upward ruling structure of the Internet as initially built by the EU for truly autonomous regulation, not a downstream government-led rule.