잊혀질 권리와 명예훼손

The right to be forgotten as a measure of damages for defamation

In digital information era, we use cyberspace to bidirectionally exchange information via the internet and access to vast quantities of data. While the digital age takes over, new criminal offenses like cyber and online defamation have also emerged. Cyber defamation infringes on its victims and spreads with rapid speed over a wide range of diffusion. It can appear to anyone connected to the internet, and the spread tends to continue. Nowadays the situation of libel on cyberspace is very serious and concern. Defamation is now covered by several laws in Korea, criminal law, civil law, and special law under the 'Personal Data Protection Act' and the 'Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Data Protection etc.'(The Information and Communications Network Act). Especially, cyber defamation is addressed in Chapter 33 of the Criminal Law and in Article 70 of the Information and Communications Network Act. But it is nearly impossible to regulate all these kinds of cyber libel criminally. Recently, the new right, 'right to be forgotten', is produced from the debates and legislations. The right to be forgotten can be defined as the right for an individual to delete personal information on the cyberspace. However this right of erasing on the web in order to be forgotten comes into conflict with freedom of expression. It needs to regulate the concerns in the depth consideration of freedom of speech, matters of harmony and the responsibility of operators and internet users. So it is necessary to answer for the question of confliction of these two rights in the cyberspace, by limiting the extent and scope of each of them. Based on this understanding, the paper explored the possibility of applying the right to be forgotten as a remedy for damages caused by defamation on the net. Therefore, to control cyber defamation in proper conditions, we must recognize the characteristics of the right to be forgotten using the fair comparison of interests. To achieve these, the study gives an overview of the special concepts and attributes of the right to be forgotten regarding the defamation. Then it analyzes related legal basis of the right to be forgotten in the EU as well as domestic criminal and special act to point out the problems and discuss countermeasures of cyber libel to be applied.