사이버상 불법ㆍ유해정보에 의한 피해현황과 실효적 법제도 개선방안

The state of damage caused by illegal and harmful content on cyberspace and thoughts for effective solutions

In today's information era, virtual space, called 'cyberspace', creates a huge pile of information. With its strong dissemination ability and easy accessibility, cyberspace brings many positive effects to our lives. For example, it contributes to reducing the information gaps among regions and generations by preventing information monopoly by a certain group and use of information as power. However, cyberspace also brings the following adverse effects: (i) it creates useful and good content and, at the same time, pours out huge piles of harmful content, impeding the formation of a sound culture; and (ii) its strong dissemination ability causes loss of control in handing content and indiscreet access to content on the part of users. Evidently, these adcerse effects hamper the youth's development of sound individuality. Accordingly, relevant acts regulating media materials distributed and used in cyberspace habe been amended to restrict the distribution of harmful cyber media materals. Under the amended acts, bodies that review the harmfulness of relevant media materials extend the coverage of their review to harmful cyber media materials. As the development of IT technologies brings media convergence, however, media materials that are harmful to the youth continue to evolve into more sophisticated and advanced forms. This ist causing conflict among review bodies that have control over their own media areas, as classified according to type of media. Such conflicts among review bodies may throw both providers and users of media materials that are harmful th the youth into confusion in that (i) different age standards for the youth that vary according to the legislative purpose of a relevant act as the basis of a review causes different scopes of regulation by the review bodies in relation to media materials that are harmful to the youth; (ii) each of the review bodies has its own separate review standard; and (iii) Korea currently operates not a single monolithic mechanism but a dual review mechanism in relation to the regulation of media materials that are harmful to the youth. Currently in Korea, four specialized review bodies-the Korean Publication Ethics Commission, the Korea Media Rating Board, the Broadcasting Commussion, and the Korea Internet Safety Commission-have the authority to review first relevant media materials that are harmful to the youth, and the Youth Commission plays the role of a supplemental review body. To prevent overlapping reviews from frequently taking place with the advance of the cyber era, it would be necessary to reorganize and omprove the review system into a single, unified mechanism around the Youth Commission rather than a dual one. Of course, a unified review mechanism involves the risk of concentration of power. Therefore, it is desirable for the Commission to play the role of a supplemental review body, as before. Instead, the Commission should be entitled to present the unified review criteria on harmfulness to the youth and age standards for the youth. This would be a reasonable means to a unified regulation for youth protection in today's cyber era. In addition, appeals to relevant acts and ethics alone are not enough to protect the youth from the harmful media materials distributed and used in cyberspace. Secure technological responses are a more radical measure against such harmful materials. Therefore, it would be necessary to develop filtering and blocking programs and to complete adult verification systems to block access by the youth to such harmful media materials.