China’s newly-implemented tort law, the country’s first special law on liability for acts of infringement, is likely to further safeguard individuals’ personal and property rights and better gauge social behavior, law experts said Friday.

The Tort Liability Law, which took effect Thursday, provides that people may sue for damages following medical accidents, road accidents, harm from pollution, mental distress, and violations of privacy or reputation on the Internet, as well as injuries from objects thrown from high-rise buildings.

“Due to the lack of a legal basis to handle infringement cases in the past, the enforcement of the tort law will possibly trigger a surge in civil claims in the near future,” said Wang Jun, a professor from the law school of Shanghai-based Fudan University.

The tort law, approved in December of last year, has been seen as one of the key laws within China’s legal framework of civil rights protection.

The Financial Times reports on the marked, albeit limited, significance of the new law:

In China, politicians decide which disputes get into court. A new law alone cannot change that. However, the law is still expected to lead to a boom in tort lawsuits, and will give ordinary people a new channel for resolving disputes outside the political system.

Along with the passage two years ago of a labour contract law, which helps workers fight back against abusive employers, the tort law will encourage a culture of individual rights, and could act as a safety valve for pressures on the political system, legal experts say.

The tort law has already wielded some influence, as it was cited as an influence in a recent court ruling against Baidu. Baidu was fined for causing emotional distress to a young woman, after a spurned lover disseminated her nude photos and identification information on the Internet. The search engine has since deployed 200 people to filter or delete relevant results. From Global Times:

A Shanghai court has ordered Baidu, China’s largest search engine, to publicly apologize to a female university student whose nude photos were published online and compensate her for pain and suffering.

Li Hongguang, the court’s publicity officer, told the Global Times Thursday that it was the first case in Shanghai of privacy rights infringement over the Internet.

He said the judgment was based on the general principles of the Civil Law, but that the court had also referred to the Tort Liability Law, which went into effect Thursday.

China Youth Daily reported Thursday that the People’s Court of Jing’an district in Shanghai ruled that Baidu should pay 22,000 yuan ($3,242) in compensation for the damage inflicted on student Yin Hong, and another 2,000 yuan to compensate for her economic losses.

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Post tags: Baidu, human flesh search engines, tort law
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At the end of May, “Zhejiang Province’s Informatization Promotion Regulations (Draft)” solicited public feedback. The area’s informatization “promotion” rules attracted national attention to worries over information obstruction.

The draft reads as follows: “Any unit or individual must not publish, distribute, delete, or edit another’s related information without permission.” This article has been read as prohibiting “human flesh search engines” (人肉搜索) (i.e., using modern information technology to do interactive searches for information, typically using the Internet to look up people’s [personal information]).

On June 8, the State Council news office published a white paper on “The State of China’s Internet,” which indicated that Chinese citizens would receive protections under the law for online free speech, and that the Chinese government seriously regarded the Internet’s purpose for monitoring.

The white paper also indicated that the Chinese government would actively create conditions for citizens to monitor the government and that it strongly regarded the Internet’s purpose for monitoring, as people could use the Web to give the government feedback and ask for solutions. In turn, the government could then relay results back to the people.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Journalism and Communication researcher Yin Yungong stated in an Outlook interview: “Human flesh search engines are a double-edged sword. While they may at times infringe on innocent people’s private information — and even go too far — they also manifest the ability of the Internet to monitor. This is plain to see.”

Many experts who were interviewed expressed that human flesh search engines are a broad and hard to define topic. Currently, at the national level, there is no clear law that provides a definition or assessment [of human flesh search engines].

From Science and Technology Daily, a cartoon depicts a legislative ban (立法禁止) cutting short information collection via human flesh search engines:

From Xinhua, “banning human flesh searches”:

From Lanzhou Morning Post, a “human flesh search”:

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Post tags: accountability, human flesh search engines, white paper
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From his Beijing office, which he has dubbed “the Abattoir”, he spends most days scanning online newspaper and blog reports for hints of scandals, cover-ups and official misdeeds that he can investigate and expose to public scrutiny.

He is one of the most daring of a growing band of full-time, internet-savvy, Chinese social activists who are beginning to take their calls for justice and transparency from the virtual into the real world.

With his shaved head, goatee beard, burly frame and wide, disarming smile this former aviation sector official and entrepreneur resembles a warrior monk, an impression that is heightened by the Buddhist prayer beads he always carries with him.

His zealous defence of downtrodden citizens who take on the might of the Communist party has a religious tinge to it, as does his aura of impending martyrdom when discussing the government’s response to him and his fellow “netizen” activists.

Watch also a video report from FT.

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Post tags: human flesh search engines, online activism
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AT THE BEIJING headquarters of Mop, Ben Du, the site’s head of interactive communities, told me that the Chinese term for human-flesh search engine has been around since 2001, when it was used to describe a search that was human-powered rather than computer-driven. Mop had a forum called human-flesh search engine, where users could pose questions about entertainment trivia that other users would answer: a type of crowd-sourcing. The kitten-killer case and subsequent hunts changed all that. Some Netizens, including Du, argue that the term continues to mean a cooperative, crowd-sourced investigation. “It’s just Netizens helping each other and sharing information,” he told me. But the Chinese public’s primary understanding of the term is no longer so benign. The popular meaning is now not just a search by humans but also a search for humans, initially performed online but intended to cause real-world consequences. Searches have been directed against all kinds of people, including cheating spouses, corrupt government officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system. Human-flesh searches highlight what people are willing to fight for: the political issues, polarizing events and contested moral standards that are the fault lines of contemporary China.

Versions of the human-flesh search have taken place in other countries. In the United States in 2006, one online search singled out a woman who found a cellphone in a New York City taxi and started to use it as her own, rebuffing requests from the phone’s rightful owner to return it. In South Korea in 2005, Internet users identified and shamed a young woman who was caught on video refusing to clean up after her dog on a Seoul subway car. But China is the only place in the world with a nearly universal recognition (among Internet users) of the concept. I met a film director in China who was about to release a feature film based on a human-flesh-search story and a mystery writer who had just published a novel titled “Human-Flesh Search.”

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Post tags: human flesh search engines, Internet culture
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China’s Homepage: Sina News (新浪新闻)

Innovator: Hou Xiaoqiang, CEO of Shanda Literature (侯小强)

Most valuable website (News category): Yeeyan
Nominations: Caijing, Financial Times CN, Wikipedia, Yeeyan (财经网、FT中文网、维基百科、译言)

Most valuable website (Commercial and financial category): Taobao
Nominations: Anjuke, East Money, LetPower, 360buy, Taobao (安居客、东方财富网、记账网、京东商城、淘宝网)

Most valuable website (Opinion category): Tianya
Nominations: Baidu Tieba, Cat898, Mop, Tianya, Sina Microblogging (百度贴吧、凯迪社区、猫扑、天涯社区、新浪微博客)

Most valuable website (Services category): DianPing
Nominations: DianPing, O.cn, Kuxun, liba.com, 55BBS (大众点评网、都市圈、酷讯旅游网、篱笆网、我爱打折网)

Most valuable website (Social category): Kaixin
Nominations: Facebook, Hainei, Kaixin, 51mole.com, RenRen (Facebook中文版、海内网、开心网、摩尔庄园、人人网)

Most valuable website (Multimedia category): Tudou
Nominations: Haoting, Top100.cn, Tudou, 1ting, Youku (好听音乐网、巨鲸音乐、土豆网、一起听音乐网、优酷网)

Most valuable website (Literature and arts category): Qidian
Nominations: Artbaba, Qidian, Readnovel.com, Artron.net (Artbaba、起点中文网、小说阅读网、雅昌艺术网)

Most valuable website (Fashion category): Haibao
Nominations: Fashion Trend Digest, Haibao, Modern Party, onlylady (FTD观潮网、海报时尚网、摩登夜会、onlylady)

Best niche website: Douban
Nominations: Douban, Songshuhui, Kongfz.com, Xitek, Pepo.cn (豆瓣、科学松鼠会、孔夫子旧书网、色影无忌、小众玩家门户网)

Best blog: Li Chengpeng
Nominations: Han Han, Hong Huang, Huang Jiwei, Li Chengpeng, Lian Yue (韩寒、洪晃、黄集伟、李承鹏、连岳)

The second feature portion is “China’s Internet Life Red Paper,” and the third is “The Internet: Putting People First.” An excerpt from the “Red Paper” on how the effects of the Internet are being felt offline:

In February 2009, the “Eluding the Cat” case broke out in Yunnan and attracted the country’s attention. The Yunnan Publicity Department then made the unprecedented move of inviting netizens to form an investigation committee. “Eluding the Cat” became a popular Internet phrase. Later in May 2009, because the police evaluation of the “5·7″ incident was unsatisfactory, netizens created the term “qishima” [homophone of "70 km per hour"] to satirize the car’s purported speed. Then in July 2009, “Pull Down Pants Gate” and other videos spread on the net; discussions and debates about the post-90s generation flourished.

Today’s Internet is no longer simply an illusory world. Not only does it affect reality to some degree, it also provides an effective outlet for expression.

“The Internet’s three big forms of physical exercise” are “buying soy sauce,” “doing push ups,” and “eluding the cat.” Each has come from actual news. “The Internet’s 10 mythical creatures,” with “Grass Mud Horse” leading the way, were a form of netizen expression. Human flesh search engines showed their strength starting from 2006 Heilongjiang’s “kitten killer” incident. Today, the phenomenon has developed to the point that after most news events happen, different degrees of the “human flesh search engine” will be at work. And breaking Internet news is becoming increasingly popular; the country’s entertainment reporters all go to Tianya to look for news sources, and Sina celebrity blog posts have also become the content of traditional media reports.

[...] From reality to the Internet, every tragedy has a comedic conclusion. Chinese people have experienced 30 years of enormous change in their lives; online, they have experienced 15 years of enormous change. Netizens have gone from being spectators to participants, creating the content of the Internet, and have become society’s watchdogs.

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Post tags: human flesh search engines, Internet news, Li Chengpeng, online culture
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To a certain extent, such online freedom of speech is now being encouraged by the central leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as it is of great help for them to have first-hand understanding of public sentiment and to supervise the behavior of local officials. At the same time, the CCP imposes tough censorship on any content on the Internet that is deemed a threat to its continued rule.

Ironically, while few of the nearly 300 million Internet users in China (or 298 million by the end of 2008) like the government’s censorship on political content on the Internet, there are growing concerns about the abuse of freedom of speech on the web. People are alarmed that there is a lack of law enforcement to deal with people who deliberately spread false information online to attack others, particularly celebrities.

Such concerns reached a climax recently with two so-called “gate scandals” – “Bribery-gate” and “Spy-gate” – both of which involved attractive young hostesses from the state-run television channel China Central Television (CCTV).

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: freedom of speech, human flesh search engines, Internet control, Internet privacy, privacy rights
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The second part of Human Flesh Search Engine, a short documentary film directed by Luis A. Tapia is now online at Vimeo and at Daedalum Films’ website.

You’ll need a password to access the film: email info -at- daedalumfilms.com to get it. You can watch the first half of the film without a password here or here.

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First of all, administering the internet is simply not like regulating the traditional media. Every second there is a steady flow of different opinions pouring in, like a circle of life that can’t be stopped in its course. Deletion will stay an incomplete and insufficient option. Moreover, what kind of “opinion” should be deleted or not be deleted? Since adequate regulations can hardly be set beforehand, [these decisions] will be left to the obscure judgment of various departments. But different interpretations of the pronounced standards can easily lead to a severe imbalance in the amount [of information] deleted. Under the pressure of finding offences, the responsible administrators instinctively tend to be overtly strict when it comes to closing [sites], with a result that will most likely rather resemble “a massacre and slaughter of the innocent at will”.

But wiping out valuable discourses will turn the internet – a place that should be full of vitality – into a desolate wasteland. And in such an environment the supervision of the judiciary trough the media will inevitably become a meaningless phrase. But, as stated earlier, without supervision an impartial judicature cannot exist. So in the end it will be the same restrictions imposed on the freedom of speech that were originally intended to reduce the pressure on the judiciary that will ultimately lead to an even more unjust system. You could say it “started as a nobleman, but ended like a crook”.

The bottom line is: The root of the problem does not lie in the popular will itself, but in the lack of judiciary independence.

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Post tags: He Weifang, human flesh search engines, judicial reform, online public opinion
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The Chinese government disabled some search functions on the Chinese-language Web site of Google on Friday, saying the site was linking too often to pornographic and vulgar content.

Government officials met with managers of the Chinese operations of Google on Thursday afternoon to warn them that the company would be punished if it did not remove the offending material from the Web site, according to a report on Friday by Xinhua, the state news agency.

[...]On Friday evening, the associative-word feature of the Web site appeared to have been disabled. That is the function that displays a drop-down menu of words related to a search word that is typed into the search engine. The previous evening, reporters on China Central Television, the state television network, showed how typing in the Chinese word for son, erzi, could pull up associated terms that have lewd connotations.

Additionally, the government has ordered Google to block links to foreign websites from search results on its China Google page.  From the Dow Jones Newswires via Total Telecom:

Chinese regulators have ordered Google Inc. to suspend search services for foreign Web sites via its Chinese Web site, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday, a day after the company was warned over pornographic content available through its search engine.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the order applies to all foreign Web sites or just certain sites. Currently, foreign Web sites are still searchable and accessible from Google’s Chinese home page.

Google was also ordered to suspend searches for certain key words when summoned by unspecified regulators Thursday afternoon, the report said.

On June 18, CCTV aired a report on Google’s pornographic content which has drawn swift criticism from Chinese netizens, particularly for a false interview with a supposed ‘college student’ named Gao Ye.  (Watch the full CCTV segment, including the Gao Ye interview, on Sina.com.)  EastSouthNorthWest translates a post by Xiao Tian at Oxn.in (Chinese) summarizing netizen skepticism:

On the same day, netizens began to question quickly.  Search engines frequently offer likely search terms because these are popular with other users.  As such, the search engines are not responsible because they are only reporting what users are “voting” on with their searches.  Thus, when Google.cn proposes certain relevant search terms, they are merely informing you what other netizens are most commonly searching for.  They are reflecting the facts of life, and it shows that Google.cn is being fair and objective.  Rather than blaming the search engines, we should be blaming people for wanting to look up pornography which proliferate on the Chinese Internet.

Similarly, other search engines such as Baidu and Bing contain the same kinds of pornographic information, but CCTV completely ignores them.  Netizens made screen captures to show that Baidu is no less vulgar than Google.cn …

Soon after this CCTV segment aired, the Southern Metropolis Daily (Chinese) reported that the interviewed university student Gao Ye was in fact a CCTV intern.  Netizens have launched the human flesh search engine.  Again translated by EastSouthNorthWest:

Yesterday morning, a netizen discovered that there was a user named “Gao Ye” at the social networking site Xiaonei.  Based upon the photos, this is the same Gao Ye who appeared the day before on <Focus Interview>.  According to a conversation with a friend on June 17, Gao Ye is presently an intern with the CCTV program <Focus Interview>.  Also, other netizens found Gao Ye and his friends’ Sina.com blogs which said that he was going to become an intern at CCTV.  This information was later posted at Cat898 Forum, Tianya Form and other websites.  The reporter confirmed with a worker at CCTV’s <Focus Interview> program group that Gao Ye is indeed an intern there.

The human flesh search quickly located and published Gao Ye’s school, QQ number, mobile phone number and other personal information.  His Xiaonei page was flooded with scornful comments.  Not satisfied with direct personal attacks, some netizens began a human flesh search on his girlfriend.  Her blog, Xiaonei page, QQ number and other information were published.  Her photos with Gao Ye were posted all over the place alongside personal attacks.

Faced with the pressure from the powerful human flesh search, Gao Ye and his girlfriend deleted their blogs.  Gao Ye’s Xiaonei space now only has the message: “Account canceled by the user.”

ChinaSMACK has translations of netizen reactions to the CCTV report and also a translation of a sarcastic letter to the ‘university student’ Gao Ye from Hudong Baike (Chinese):

A Letter To Gao Ye

Schoolmate Gao Ye, hello: You probably do not know me, but I know you from Focus Interview. I attentively listened to you talk about the “Google China using yellow pictures [pornography] and vulgar content to poison your schoolmate” thing, and was deeply touched and learned a lot. Whether or not that schoolmate is really yourself is not important, but I hope to give you some sincere advice.

One, you must not look at pornography and vulgar content too much, Schoolmate Gao Ye. I do not know if you with your schoolmate have reached pornography and vulgar content through links on Google China, but as a big brother who has matured from youth, let me say to you that normally you must not watch too much A片 and avoid vulgar content. These are bad for your skin. These past two days, did you stay up all night going online to find 毛片 ["hand films", pornography films] look at pornography doing your homework in preparation for the CCTV interview? Look at yourself, just two days and you no longer look human: slackened eyes; wrinkles on your forward; gaping mouth. That’s why big brother is offering you a piece of advice: look at less porn and go outside more, wouldn’t that be good? Another thing, there are always at least a few girls in your classes, right? Occasionally molesting them a little is definitely more exciting than porn.

Two, you must not accept interviews from CCTV about vulgar content, Schoolmate Gao Ye. It is not that I am jealous of you getting on CCTV, really. It is because after 60 years of studying CCTV’s programs I have discovered that every schoolmate that has gone on CCTV to interview about vulgar content always eventually has a bad fate. Let us use schoolmate Zhang Shufan from the year before last as an example. Just days before Teacher Edison Chen’s photo exhibition, CCTV’s “Xin Wen Lian Bo” broadcast “Schoolmate Zhang Shufan’s interview about pornography and vulgar content”. At the time, Schoolmate Zhang Shufan only said “very yellow, very violent” these few words, but do you know what happened to her? There were even more wretched/perverted pictures but I will not post them here. You as a good young lad currently studying in university should know what accepting this kind of interview will do for your future prospects.

© dwang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Gao Ye, Google, human flesh search engines, Internet censorship, Internet pornography, netizens
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The human flesh search has come up with the real identities of all the netizen representatives on the investigation team.  They all have media working experiences and backgrounds, and therefore they are regarded as people inside the system.  Some netizens have labeled them “fifty-cent gang members.”  In the virtual world of the Internet, “fifty-cent gang member” is a derogatory term for full-time or part-time commentators who speak out and lead Internet opinion while being employed and directed by the government.

These accusations have caused doubts about the selection processes by the Yunnan province party publicity department of the investigative team members.  At the time, the Yunnan province party publicity department explained that the selection was done in two stages.  In the first stage, netizens without high name recognition on the Internet were eliminated.  In the second stage, the team members were randomly selected from the remaining names.

[Netizen investigative leader] Tail End of the Wind [real name Zhao Li] rejected these accusations.  He told the reporter that he had left his old job [at Cailong Net, a portal for the local party newspaper Kunming Daily] many years ago.  He is presently an Internet editor for Yunnan TV Net.  Since he has not signed a labor contract yet, he does not even have a social security account number.  So he could not possibly be a member of the “system.”  He made a wager that if anyone can find out his social security account number, then that person can take all the money away.  He said that in frustration.

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Post tags: eluding the cat, fifty cent party, human flesh search engines, Internet commentators, Li Qiaoming, netizens, online public opinion, wumao, Yunnan
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