Oerjan Moy Assignment 2

Oerjan Moy

Assignment # 2: analysis of an online crime

This past September, a 16 year old boy was arrested for spreading rumors over the Internet. The crime involved posts that questioned if the police were doing a good job after a man fell and died from the upper floor of a karaoke club. The post was written on a popular messaging service and on a micro blog. The message was reposted 962 times and viewed thousands of times. This violated the new rumor regulations; if someone is spreading a rumor on the internet the person could be punished if it was reposted over 500 times or viewed more than 5,000 times. The boy was arrested for “seriously disrupted social order” because the boy post caused a few dozen unemployed people to gather at the scene of the death of the other man and started to chant slogans. This was also leading to traffic chaos, and a situation out of control.

The boy’s family has now retained a lawyer and vows to vigorously defend their son.

I think that the reason for the disinhibition was a “minization of status and authority”. When people, in this example the 16 year old boy are online and often are anonymous, it’s easier to say what they are thinking to an authority without consequences, especially in China. When the authority is minimized it’s easier to use the freedom of speech.

In this case the freedom of speech become too big and got too much attention. At the beginning when post was reposted under 500 times it wasn’t a crime. After the 500 it began to be too big for the Chinese government, and they made it a crime. The boy become a victim of a non-crime because the non-crime got too much attention and become a crime.

Link to article: http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-arrest-rumors-internet-20130921,0,2831881.story