The "insulting material" in Yet K007's diary contained words such as "Chen
Tangfa is indeed an uncouth person. I can see this from his book. He wrote the
worst textbook".
The teacher, who had asked for 10,000 yuan for emotional damages, agrees that
people can freely express themselves in cyberspace as long as their comments do
not infringe on the rights of others.
"The website has a responsibility to make sure the blogs they host do not
violate the law," he said.
Chen hopes the case will bring more discipline and order to cyberspace.
Blogcn spokesperson, Fang Huaifeng, told Xinhua that from now on the website
will carefully examine every complaint it receives. If they determine that the
blog comments are slanderous or defamatory they will be deleted and the writer
will be contacted. "We have a responsibility to ensure the interests of our
users and the interests of others, said Fang.
Fang says the court-ordered apology has not yet been posted on Blogcn's
website as the company has 15 days to consider if it will appeal the ruling.
Some media are reporting that Chen's is the first lawsuit filed against a
blog website in China and it could have a far reaching impact on Chinese
bloggers. It has also stirred debate among blog fanatics and legal experts.
"Blogs are not personal diaries that you keep to yourself, the readership can
be extremely large over the Internet. So it's imperative Chinese law-makers come
up with appropriate regulations," said Ye Yu, a lawyer with the Liuhong Law Firm
in Nanjing.
Ye said order in cyber space can only be maintained by introducing
regulations or detailed interpretations of related law articles.
Some experts hope laws will require websites to be responsible for
supervising their content. They also want netizens to be required to identify
themselves when they sign up as users.
Fang Xingdong, CEO of another well-known blog website Bokee.com, said that
these issues should be solved through the self-discipline of bloggers
themselves.
Yet Blogcn's website lists a set of rules that bloggers are required to
follow. The rules say bloggers are not to post libelous and defamatory comments
nor messages that disseminate hate, discrimination, insults, superstition,
rumor, obscenity and violence.
Yet many blog writers say it would be hard to tightly control and regulate
bloggers.
"It would be annoying and offensive to let staff of a website monitor what we
write in our own space," said Fang Jing, a Beijing-based blogger.
Fang said the fun of writing blogs will die out if she has to be careful of
every sentence she writes online.
Yu Li, a postgraduate student at the Law School of Wuhan University in
central China's Hubei Province, argues bloggers' self-discipline is the key.
"It's beyond the scope of websites to supervise every message posted online,
because blogs are updated every second," Yu said.
Current regulations in China require websites to delete inappropriate
messages posted by its users, but many websites don't have the money, staff or
willingness to moderate every comment.
Last year the number of Chinese bloggers reached 16 million, accounting for
more than 10 percent of total netizens. Their numbers are expected to top 60
million this year and to near 100 million next year, according to a forecast in
the Media Blue Paper 2006, a book published by the prestigious Tsinghua
University.
Blogcn was founded on November 18, 2002 and by the end of November last year
it had more than 4.5 million registered users, according the company's official
website.