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Real Name Verification Law on the Internet: A Poison or Cure for Privacy?

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Economics of Information Security and Privacy III

Abstract

As the internet media has become more widely used over time, public opinions formed by internet discussions affect political and social issues more critically. While the internet space guarantees equal status for every participant and equal opportunity in terms of freedom of speech based on anonymity, baseless rumors, personal defamation, and privacy invasion against particular individuals and groups are more likely to happen rather than in the face-to-face offline communications. In order to prevent this undesirable effect, the South Korean government implemented Real Name Verification Law in July 2007 by which discussion participants should pass verification process in order to express their opinions in most websites. This study examines the effects of Real Name Verification Law in several aspects. By applying content analysis to abundant data of postings in a leading discussion forum that is subject to the law, the results suggest that Real Name Verification Law has a dampening effect on overall participation in the short-term, but the law did not affect the participation in the long term. Also, identification of postings had significant effects on reducing uninhibited behaviors, suggesting that Real Name Verification Law encouraged users’ behavioral changes in the positive direction to some extent. The impact is greater for Heavy User group than for Light and Middle User groups. Also, discussion participants with their real names showed more discreet behaviors regardless of the enforcement of the law. By analyzing the effect of this policy at the forefront of internet trends of South Korea, this paper can shed light on some useful implications and information to policy makers of other countries that may consider certain type of internet regulations in terms of privacy and anonymity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Dog Shit Girl’ case has changed public sentiment in favor of Real Name Verification Law, as discussed more specifically in Sect. 2.

  2. 2.

    http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=PressReleaseViewer{\&}a0=4748

  3. 3.

    Second: Singapore (88%), 3rd: Netherlands (85%), USA (60%) (at the end of 2008).

  4. 4.

    When a girl riding a South Korean subway refused to clean up her dog’s excrement, a witness took pictures of her and posted them on a popular website, along with an account of her misbehavior. Within hours, she and her dog were recognized everywhere they went. Within hours, she was labeled “dog-shit-girl” and her pictures and parodies were everywhere on the cyberspace. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying as well as her watch, clearly visible in the original picture. All mentions of privacy invasion were shouted down with accusations of being related to the girl.(Source:http://boingboing.net/2005/06/29/woman_doesnt{\_}clean{\_}u.html)

  5. 5.

    It is not an exaggerated statement that almost all frequently-visited websites by South Korean people came to be laid under this restriction

  6. 6.

    Resident registration number is equivalent to social security number in the US. This is a 13-digit number issued to all residents of South Korean citizens. It is used to identify people in various private transactions such as in banking and employment. It is also used extensively for online identification purposes.

  7. 7.

    http://agora.media.daum.net/ According to the official announcement of the portal operator, the total number of postings in all categories of forums was 784,107 by 74,949 participants in the period April 1, 2008–June 18, 2008, and the number unique visitors were 7.9 million in April, 2008

  8. 8.

    http://www.chosun.com/

  9. 9.

    http://www.freezone.co.kr/

  10. 10.

    Most discussion board systems automatically block writings with well-known swear words by their own filtering algorithm, so it is common for participants to use these words in a slightly different way. These words were regarded as homogeneous words to the original swear words in this paper.

  11. 11.

    Two independent coders rated each set of postings on the basis of the provided standards, and cross-checked for coding reliability. Both coders are Ph.D students in social science fields in the US, whose native language is Korean.

  12. 12.

    After sorting by the number of postings in the given period, every tenth of participants are selected.

  13. 13.

    Some websites including Facebook.com hold their own policy in terms of using users’ real names rather than their nicknames.

  14. 14.

    “Impersonating anyone or anything is not permitted. To encourage people to use their real names on Facebook, we limit the number of times names can be changed.”, “Your account was disabled because the name under which it was registered was fake. We do not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations. In addition, Facebook accounts are intended for use by single individuals, so groups, clubs, businesses, or other types of organizations are not permitted to maintain accounts.” (excerpt from Help Center at Facebook.com)

  15. 15.

    http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/myspace-quietly-begins-encouraging-users-to-use-their-real-names/

  16. 16.

    The update to Facebook’s comments box plugin was intended to make comments more relevant. Users to a particular site see comments from Facebook friends first and Facebook added public information about users next to their names. (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381630,00.asp)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Systems and Management, The H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Daegon Cho

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  1. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

    Bruce Schneier

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Cho, D. (2013). Real Name Verification Law on the Internet: A Poison or Cure for Privacy?. In: Schneier, B. (eds) Economics of Information Security and Privacy III. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1981-5_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1981-5_11

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