Martin Uden

Freedom of Expression in the Digital Age

A few things came together to inspire us in the Embassy to arrange a seminar on “Freedom of Expression on the Internet”, which took place last Friday. First was the anniversary of British journalist, Ernest Bethell’s death (see my blog of 11 May for details about him), then the case of ‘Minerva’ in Korea, a blogger on trial (and subsequently found not guilty) for spreading false information with harmful intent, and more generally some work we’d done last year on the 60^th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

The dilemmas posed by the internet and its relatively unregulated nature are things that I feel would have attracted Bethell.  It’s also a live issue in both the UK and Korea and we have experiences and ideas to share with each other.  Both the Korean Ministry for Culture, Media and Sports and the Korea Communications Commission agreed to co-organise the seminar, and the Embassy brought out two expert speakers from the UK (Derek Wyatt, MP, Chair of the Parliamentary Group on Communications, and Dr Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute – for their presentations, click here).  In addition, the Korea Press Foundation and the Netherlands Embassy helped with sponsorship.

On the day, hundreds turned up to listen to, and debate with, experts from government, business, media and regulators.  The presentations were of a very high standard and brought out just the issues that I hoped would get an airing, from the balance between protecting privacy and maintaining freedom of expression, to the question of legislation versus self-regulation.  Obviously, these are sensitive issues, and different countries will try to resolve them differently, but that’s why it’s good to look at them in an international context.

A fascinating day and this issue won’t go away any time soon…

Posted at 17:17 06 July 2009 by Martin Uden  |  Comments[2]