By Yoon Sung-won
The government said it will enforce revised ordinances of the Telecommunications Business Act to tighten control over phishing scams and obscene material on telecommunications networks.
The revision stipulates that service provides must shut down phone calls and text messages sent from a fabricated number to protect users from financial fraud.
The companies are also obligated to provide measures to screen what the government calls “harmful media content to juveniles.”
“The revision aims at arranging countermeasures against financial fraud and illegal, obscene materials on mobile networks,” the government said in a statement on Tuesday. “At the same time, it will ease unnecessary regulations that interrupt telecom companies’ business activities.”
The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said phone numbers used for illegal load service advertisement will be blocked and companies need to establish measures to prevent identity theft and phone number fabrication.
Web hard service providers will be obligated to adopt technological measures to block searching, uploading and downloading of illegal, obscene material.
Telecom companies must make sure their juvenile subscribers are protected from pornography distributed through their networks and inform their parents when such measures are not active or deleted.
The nation’s telecom watchdog stressed that the strengthened crackdown on lewd contents mainly targets businesses such as telecom companies and web storage service providers, not personal Internet users.
The revised ordinances have triggered rumors that those who download pornography to store and watch them, not only those who distribute such contents for profit, will be subject to punishment.
Internet users said they should download and stock adult content before the revision takes effect.
Some criticized that it will excessively limit grown-ups’ private sexual freedom.
KCC, the nation’s telecom watchdog, said the purpose of the revised ordinance is to crack down on rampant distribution of obscene materials through web services and peer-to-peer (P2P) programs such as the BitTorrent protocol.
A KCC official said, “The government seeks to clamp down on businesses, not individuals privately downloading obscene materials.” Those who do not make monetary profit by uploading such materials are basically not subject to punishment, he said.
The service providers also have to file their users’ log records and open them for the government. The watchdog said this is to monitor whether the companies have taken proper technological measures, not to gain access to users’ personal information.
If a company does not take measures to block illegal pornography, the government can cancel its business registration or shutdown the company for up to nine months.
Meanwhile, the revision also obligates handset makers, importers and venders to install a warning sign on the handset’s booting screen or on the handset casing that using the phone while moving may cause accidents.