COURT FINES "FLESH SEARCH ENGINE"

IN CHINA, COURT FINES "FLESH SEARCH ENGINE" 20 Dec 2008, 0247 hrs IST, Mark McDonald, NYT News Service HONG KONG: In the first case involving “cyber-violence” and a “human flesh search engine” in China, a court has fined a website and an internet user for posting personal and intimate details about an unfaithful husband, his mistress and a spurned wife who committed suicide. While the fines in the case were small, legal scholars said the ruling could carry a wider significance as the Chinese government and the Communist Party search for ways to police the internet. A recent rise in online vigilantism could lead the authorities to issue more dramatic restrictions on internet users and websites. The court ruling, which was announced on Friday, specifically mentioned “cyber-violence” and the possibilities for abuse by human flesh search engines, which the three-judge court called “an alarming phenomenon.” The term comes from a widely used compiler of blogs and search engines in China called Renrou, which means human flesh. In the ruling announced Friday, after the wife killed herself in December 2007, her personal diary was posted on the Internet by her sister. The sorrow of her final days, which she had recorded in a private blog-diary, set thousands of outraged human flesh searchers to work, tracking down the husband. The husband, Wang Fei, 28, soon began receiving death threats, harassing calls at work and was vilified on the Internet. He and his girlfriend were forced to leave their jobs at a prestigious advertising agency.

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