2021년 언론개혁법에 관한 헌법적 고찰 — 정보통신망법 개정안을 중심으로 —

초록

Recently, the ruling Democratic Party, the ruling party, is promoting the legislation of six bills called the ‘Media Reform Act’. Two of them are controversial regarding freedom of expression on the Internet. First, as an amendment to the Information and Communications Network Act initiated by Representative Yoon Young-chan on July 22, 2020, in the case of damages such as defamation through the spread of false information or other illegal information on the Internet, punitive damages should be compensated for up to three times the amount of damage. Second, as an amendment to the Information and Communications Network Act initiated by Representative Yang Ki-dae on November 5, 2020, temporary measures are expanded to oblige to restrict the operation of the bulletin board when victims of malicious comments report. Rep. Yoon Young-chan and Yang Ki-dae's bills basically under the cause of suppressing damage caused by ‘fake news’ and ‘evil comments’, introduce a kind of ‘punitive damages’ system that bears compensation in excess of damages and introduce a regulation that closes the entire bulletin board. There is a controversy over these two revisions of the Information and Communications Network Act from the viewpoint of freedom of expression on the Internet. This article analyzes the Information and Communications Network Act amendment proposed by Rep. Yoon Young-chan and the Information and Communications Network Act amendment proposed by Yang Ki-dae from a constitutional perspective. The analysis results are as follows. First, the punitive damage compensation system proposed by Rep. Yoon Young-chan's bill is highly likely to be contrary to the principle of systematic justification, the principle of clarity, and the principle of proportion. Therefore the Rep. Yoon Young-chan's bill violates the freedom of expression. Second, Rep. Yang Ki-dae's bill not only has the problems of the current temporary measure system, but also amplifies the problems, and is highly likely to violate the principle of proportion. Therefore the Rep. Yang Ki-dae's bill violates the freedom of expression.

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