Today in Censorship

By Brad

While America’s Internet remains chock full of anonymous commentators—sometimes to the detriment of society as a whole (see any comment thread on YouTube)—South Korea is cracking down on the freedom to namelessly gripe:

[E]ffective April 1 anonymous posting became illegal under certain circumstances. The new law is called the “Cyber Defamation Law.” The law provides that any Internet user making a comment or upload to a website that has over 100,000 unique visitors a day must append their real name to the comments they make. Sites must identify whether they meet the number of visitors threshold. If they do, the registration process must require the visitor wishing to post something to enter his national identification number.