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Online media should stop privacy invasion

By Yao Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-29 16:42

The online media has the advantage of enabling the free flow of information at high speed and at low cost. Websites and bloggers in China are using this to expand their influence and reap profits. Yet in their fierce competition to grab the attention of Web browsers, they seem to have ignored the fact that there should be a limit to the kind of information they put out and spread online.

A recent case has shown that websites do not bother to ask themselves if the information they put online should be made public in the first place. On Nov 16, a thread titled "All you need to know about the 50 beauties at Nanchang University" was posted on www.mop.com, one of China's biggest interactive entertainment portals. It provided names, photographs, ages, subjects of study, addresses, phone numbers and online chatroom IDs of the girls at the university.

Within two days, the thread appeared on the front pages of major websites and stayed there for quite some time. It gained more than 100,000 hits the first day it was posted on Tianya, a major Chinese online forum. It also ranked No 3 as the most searched for topic on the Baidu search engine this week.

The sassy looks of the girls and the availability of their personal information may be part of the reason why the thread has become so popular. The consequence, however, has resulted in nothing but harassment for the girls.

They have been bombarded with phone calls, text messages, emails and visits to their dorms since their personal information was disclosed on the Web.

The girls have become objects of intense curiosity and speculation. They have unwittingly become public figures. They are the latest victims of the online media striving to increase website traffic by hook or by crook. They have increased their hits at the expense of these girls.

Invasion of privacy has become a prevailing problem on the Web. The Nanchang University girls is a case in point. There are other cases that involve the so-called human flesh search engines. These websites dig up every detail of a person caught in an untoward situation.

With 240 million people wired to the Net, human flesh search engines are being used as a powerful tool to punish those involved in extra-martial affairs, domestic violence and other moral indiscretions. Anger toward these perpetrators is so vehement that Web users tend to forget these people also need to have their privacy protected.

Early this year, a man and woman in love lost their jobs after their names, addresses, companies and other personal information was made public online. The man's wife left the information on her blog before taking her life by jumping off a building late last year. Her blog was published by major websites and information about the couple was widely spread.

The story is one of the top 10 human flesh search incidents this year, as selected by some websites. Almost all the protagonists in the stories have suffered some personal loss in their real lives as a result of the online assaults.

The online media has been criticized for spreading information that infringes upon a person's legal right to privacy. In several TV panel discussions, website managers reply to the criticism by saying that they are innocent. They argue, in cases such as the Nanchang University girls, it is the person who created and posted the entry that is actually revealing the information. The websites are only platforms for people to express themselves freely.

In the human flesh search cases, the websites say netizens take pleasure in revealing information online and lashing out at the perpetrators for their immoral deeds. The websites argue that such threads naturally attract attention, and greater the number of hits, the more prominent position they occupy.

In other words, online media managers claim the spread of personal information online is of a user generating nature, and they should not be held accountable.

However, they are far from being innocent on this score. Online media does not operate in such a laissez-faire manner. These operators carefully select entries that are sexy, controversial and morally problematic and put them on the main page of their websites or on top of their forums to lure people. Otherwise, one entry can get buried very quickly among the hundreds of thousands of threads churned out every minute. It is they who decide what should be a hit before it even becomes one.

What's more, investigations reveal that many hot topics, which seem to be created by individual netizen, turn out to be carefully planned by websites to increase hits.

Fox Butterfield, an American journalist, said: "You've got to write what you find, warts and all, if you believe it to be accurate." However, no media should use all the information all of the time. Facts have to be verified. Pictures need to be selected. Editors should decide what stays in and what does not based on good judgment and ethics, and above all, in accordance with the law.

The principles that apply to the print media should also to the online media. The fact that the online media spreads information wider and faster than the print, requires us to pay special attention to make sure it does not invade privacy.

The leakage of information to 90 million users on the website of 5460 has affected many people who have registered with this alumini network. More than 73 percent of the 1.5 million websites in China collect personal data that does not fall into their domain of services. The invasion of privacy has not only made the Net a dangerous place, but also an intruder into people's real lives.

It is true that the Internet's strength lies in sharing of information. Yet what kind of information should be shared and how much of that information should be revealed remains the question.

Aside from bad taste and a problem of ethics, the rampancy of privacy invasion among websites is largely attributable to lack of a specific law regarding online privacy.

Wang Mingwen, a deputy to the National People's Congress, said legislation in China in relation to online activities has failed to catch up with the rapid growth of people who are wired to the Net.

The protection of people's privacy as an important part of personal rights should be extended to the virtual world. A law is urgently needed to lay down the legal foundation to track down and punish violators and protect people's legitimate rights.