A Study on How Characteristics of the Internet Affect the Application of Crimes against Reputation
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Chiang, Che-Wei
Abstract
This thesis focuses on how the characteristics of the Internet affect the application of crimes against reputation. Two different issues are discussed: whether speeches directed at avatars are punishable under crimes against reputation, and how characteristics of the cyberspace affect the standard of fact-checking duties of those who deliver speeches on the Internet.
As of the first issue, this thesis first analyzes the concept of reputation, and finds that reputation in the context of criminal law should be understood as how people evaluate one person, and the legal interest of reputation is the possibility to live a social life with those evaluations. This thesis further finds that people often play multiple roles in daily life. With segregation of the audience, people have different reputation with different roles. Avatars, as roles people play in the cyberspace, are no different from roles people play in real life, and the reputation surrounding avatars is indeed part of the reputation of the users controlling the avatars. Therefore, speeches directed at the avatars harm the reputation not of the avatar, but of the user controlling it. Then, in order to determine whether social life in cyberspace is worthy of protection by criminal law, this thesis compares social life in cyberspace and social life in real life in terms of characteristics of the media, qualities of interpersonal relationships, and the possibilities of relationships in cyberspace developing into relationships in real life. This thesis concludes that it can’t be said that social life in cyberspace is not worthy of protection altogether. Rather, this thesis proposes the standard of “importance to the whole of social life”, which is to weigh the social life surrounding the avatar being attacked against the whole of one person’s social life to see whether the offense is punishable, and to serve as an indicator for sentencing.
Turning to the second issue, this thesis first analyzes the two rights concerning defamation, the freedom of speech and freedom of press. Then, this thesis discovers that the Internet is relatively accessible to common people, allowing them to easily disseminate speech to the general public. Therefore, speeches on the Internet has unique value in terms of self-realization as well as facilitating discussion in the public forum, especially when traditional mass medias are mostly under the influence of major corporates in the age of neoliberalism. Although the Internet is more capable of disseminating information as a medium, on the Internet, the influence a speech has on the victim’s reputation is mainly decided by fact-checking capacity the speaker exhibits. Weighing the positive values an Internet speech concerns, this thesis considers it appropriate to exempt an Internet speaker of her criminal liability had she fulfilled the fact-checking duties as she exhibited to be capable of on the Internet.
With the conclusions of these two issues, this thesis attempts to show that social life in the Internet needs legal protection even when it is not connected to real life, while the law should pay attention of the interest Internet activities poses when intervening, so as to minimize harm to those unique values.
Subjects
妨害名譽罪
虛擬空間
網路化身
別名性
查證義務
網路媒介特性
SDGs
Type
thesis
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