YouTube Korea squelches uploads, comments | Digital Media – CNET News

I am very pleased that Google is taking a stand against Korean anti-privacy laws. The law in question requires large Internet services (like YouTube) to collect real name information about any user posting content or comments. In response, Google has completely cut off any posting or commenting through the Korean version of the site. The solution Google proposes is that users should simply log in to a non-Korean version of the site and post away. This way Google never  needs to capture identifying information.

It will be interesting to see if Korea responds by trying to block access to all non-Korean versions of YouTube. Obviously anonymity tools provide an excellent end run around this kind of restriction.

I find myself of two minds on how to feel about this action. On the one hand, it respects Korea’s right to set its own laws within its borders, without allowing any one country to dictate how the rest of the world will use such tools. On the other hand, I find such anti-privacy policies so repugnant, I would like to see companies simply refuse to comply and pull hardware out of that country while continuing to provide the service.

Doug Feaver – Listening to the Dot-Comments – washingtonpost.com

I am quite impressed with this article by a former executive editor of the Washington Post. He makes a strong case for the importance of anonymous comments. Attribution immediately leads to self censorship. Anonymous comments give a much better picture of what people really think rather than what they would like to be seen to be thinking. It is not pretty, but it is reality.