earticle

영어

In recent years, there has been much controversy regarding content regulation systems for newly introduced media-products, such as music videos, web-toons, and mobile applications. This controversy contains both regulation result issues and regulation structure issues. This study focuses on the latter, as regulation structure issues are fundamental causes of this controversy. The ultimate goal is to separately present all the proper content regulation systems for each media-product. However, this goal can hardly be achieved in a short time. Thus, this study instead tries to provide the theoretical basis for such work as a preliminary step. “Media” is a term that describes the various transmission methods of human expression such as press (off-line) media, broadcasting media, and telecommunication media. “Media-products” are the different types of contents or expressions that are contained in or transmitted through the media, such as movies, dramas, advertisements, and music video. Media-products are included under the protection of freedom of expression. However, this can be limited by media-product content regulation systems for the purpose of protecting the youth, guaranteeing the consumers’ right to know, and to some extent, securing the creator’s freedom of expression. Thus, regulation systems can be constitutionally legitimate only when they are constructed and operated with a proper balance between the creator’s freedom of expression and the above public interests, especially protection of the youth. Current media-product content regulation systems are constructed not by media-product standards, but instead by media standards. Only a few exceptions are established in the case of certain media-products that have prominent characteristics, such as movies, games, and advertisements. It can be said that the current system is based on media-oriented vertical regulation systems. However, this system no longer fits into the contemporary media environment. In order to distribute certain media-products through various media, the products should pass each of the content regulation procedures. Thus, from a constitutional perspective, this not only infringes on the freedom of expression, but also impairs youth protection. Many solutions to this problem have been proposed, such as unifying all regulation organizations or switching to a EU-type horizontal regulation system. However, every method has certain limitations. The former has practical problems, considering the historical aspect of each content regulation institution, and the latter has problems similar to those of media-oriented vertical regulation systems. Therefore, in the long term, the current system needs to be changed to a media-products-oriented horizontal regulation system. In this system, once each media-products regulation institution conducts contents regulation for the corresponding media-products with considering the characteristic of that media-products enough, those media-products can be distributed through all other media without additional content regulation. For this, it is necessary to try and separate a particular media-product regulation system from the current media-oriented system, when we can distinguish the characteristics of that media-products from those of other media-products enough. A future series of studies will deal with concrete content regulation systems for each media-product separately. In these works, the so-called ‘interdisciplinary methodology’ will be required. This methodology is used to determine the characteristics of media-products from a media studies point of view (step 1), to analyze the current status of the media-product content regulation system (step 2), and to review the system from a legal studies point of view (step 3).

한국어

현행법상 매체물에 대한 심의제도는 ‘매체물’이 아닌 ‘매체’를 기준으로 크게 대별되도록 구성한 뒤 영화, 게임물, 광고물 등 그 특성이 두드러지는 ‘매체물’들만을 선별하여 별도의 심의제도를 구축한 형태를 띠고 있다. 이는 ‘매체특성론에 기반한 수직적 규제 시스템’에 근거한 것인데, ‘매체물의 수평적 통합’이 이루어지고 있는 오늘날의 매체 환경과는 더 이상 잘 맞지 않기 때문에, 청소년 보호와 표현의 자유 보장 두 가치를 모두 훼손하는 결과까지 낳고 있다. 이러한 문제점을 극복하기 위해 그동안 심의기구를 통합하거나 유럽연합 방식의 수평적 규제 시스템으로 전환하고자 하는 방안 등이 논의되었으나 모두 일정한 한계가 있었다. 따라서 장기적으로는 ‘매체물특성론에 기반한 수평적 규제 시스템’으로의 전환을 도모할 필요가 있고, 이를 위해서는 다른 매체물들과 구별되는 독립된 특성을 일정 정도 파악할 수 있게 된 경우 해당 매체물에 대한 심의제도를 기존의 체계로부터 분리해 낼 필요가 있다고 하겠다.