YouTube Disables Comments and User Uploads For Korean Users

Craig Mundie may want a driver's license for the Internet, but Korea has actually implemented something of that kind. And, as first-time accepted submitter Pseudonym Authority writes, in the form of an excerpt from PC World: "Google has disabled user uploads and comments on the Korean version of its YouTube video portal in reaction to a new law that requires the real name of a contributor be listed along each contribution they make. The rules, part of a Cyber Defamation Law, came into effect on April 1 for all sites with over 100,000 unique visitors per day. It requires that users provide their real name and national ID card number."

Korea? Wich Korea?

[biduxe]

North Korea of course. No democratic country would have such a law.

Re:How do...

[Gadget_Guy]

how does a law like this get through... don't people want any privacy?

It is simple. Just tell the public that only terrorists, criminals and paedophiles want anonymity on the Internet. If people will put with being groped at airports, then it isn't so unthinkable that they would be too bothered by something that seems as trivial as requiring real names on the net.

Re:Korea? Wich Korea?

[ledow]

Any country with "Free", "Democratic" or "People's" in its name is, almost without exception, anything but.

Timothy

[Anonymous Coward]

Timothy,

There is simply no way that a community of this caliber can maintain its readership with such a sudden and significant drop in quality. We used to have something very special here--something that made you want to get out of bed in the middle of the night just to read. Please reconsider your recent shift in editorial oversight, or else gracefully step down from your position. I mean, seriously, please, while there's still a core community here.

Sincerely,
Anonymous Coward

Re:How do...

[TheRaven64]

Slashdot doesn't have web bugs on thousands of popular sites that all get sent your Slashdot cookie so that it can correlate your browsing habits across a large subset of the web. It also doesn't require to you provide your real name and won't ban your account if it discovers that some of the information that you've provided is incorrect. Oh, and it doesn't track your friends / foes to search for common interests to provide to advertisers.