Girls lead rise in complaints of libel on Net

By Kunio Katsumata
The Asahi Shimbun
January 17, 2008
Source: http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200801160418.html

More people, particularly female students at junior and senior high schools, are consulting police about malicious messages posted on the Internet, many of them sexually explicit in nature.

The number of cases climbed to 8,037 in 2006, up from 2,566 four years earlier, according to the National Police Agency.

In the first six months of 2007, the number stood at 4,202, up 573 from the same period the previous year.

Many of those who went to the police were female junior or senior high school students, mostly over cases of alleged libel made by schoolmates.

Many of the postings concerned sex.

NPA officers and other experts believe the malicious postings are mainly a result of love triangles or bullying that have escalated out of the classroom.

In January 2007, Ibaraki prefectural police handled the case of a third-year female student of a junior high school. The student had posted a message on a bulletin board, naming a schoolmate and saying she was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease.

In some other cases, photos of victims' faces have been posted on the Internet along with the photos taken up the girls' skirts.

Police said there were also cases in which a number of girls got together to bully classmates by posting comments on the Net.

"People tend to become extreme in Internet postings and are not really aware that they are committing crimes," an NPA official said.

The number of cases resulting in criminal charges remains low, partly because some Web site operators are uncooperative, saying they do not want to become involved in the personal problems of their subscribers.

In addition, victims are not enthusiastic about pursuing criminal punishment due to the impact that it would have on their own school lives.

The number of libel charges concerning the Internet came to only a few dozen each year between 2002 and 2006.

In the first six months of 2007, the number was 42, 10 of which were over messages by minors.

Police can ask Internet service providers to disclose information on the identities of those who post malicious messages. The requests can be made based on a law on the responsibilities of providers.

Under guidelines of an industry association of providers, the Justice Ministry can also ask providers to delete the messages when requested by victims.

The ministry made 282 such requests in 2006.

Lawyer Yoji Ochiai, who previously worked for Yahoo Japan Corp., said it is little wonder that the number of consultations on Internet slander has increased because more younger people are using the Internet.

Ochiai has proposed that the number of police officers who deal with the problem be increased and that an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanism be established for quick, out-of-court settlements.

The ADR would be designed to resolve disputes between those who ask for the deletion of messages and providers and Web site operators.(IHT/Asahi: January 17, 2008)