We often hear about innocent people getting heavy sentences for crimes they didn’t commit. But we don’t hear often about criminals that are not being caught, although they are openly committing crime. One of those crimes is cybercrime, and it is not the famously dangerous ones such as hacking banks and spreading child pornography. It is a crime that anyone can do anonymously, which is bullying and slandering people online.
In March 23, 2020, Hana Kimura, a professional wrestler died of suicide at the age of 22. The reason for suicide was cyberbullying, which can be said that she was lynched verbally for her actions in a reality TV show. It took months to find the perpetrator of the suicide, and there were only two people that were caught and convicted in total. One convicted man was convicted with the crime of public insult, and this crime is unbelievable in how light the charges are. Directly quoting the news article of the suspect, the crime of public insult, even when it results in killing the target is “the charge carries with it a punishment of being detained for up to 29 days or a fine of at least 1,000 yen ($10) to no more than 10,000 yen ($100)” (Nikkei Asia). If you kill a person in real life in the United States, you might be serving life sentences or possibly capital punishment depending on state. It is just sad to see a person only paying at most $100 for leading a person to suicide. And what makes it worse, we don’t know the name of the person that was convicted, and there are many others that were not convicted nor caught.
Cyberbullying, or often Japanese people say “Net Lynching” is a major problem surrounding the internet society today. Based off my knowledge and some global research, far east nations especially have this problem. In Japan, an idol song in 2017 was created as a satire to this problem of the toxic internet. NMB48’s “Warota People” (translated as LOL People) used satire lyrics to address this problem of net lynching. The lyrics indirectly criticize of what people are doing in the internet, such as “Someone somewhere, hide your name and make some noise!”, “Throw the stones from the chaos in the crowd”, and “Integrity, morals, conscience, just throw these things away”. In my references I have the music video and a webpage of translation of the song, and I will also post a direct link to the song.
Cyber harassment and slander are a major problem in Japan’s internet today. And the government and service providers were incompetent that they didn’t do as much to stop the problem, until someone died, and it became clear in the news. And its investigation showed more data of incompetence that the punishment in balance to its crime is very unbalanced in favor of the convict. With such cheap fines and light sentences, the punishment doesn’t serve its purpose. And for the reason for why these crimes don’t stop, I think it is in not just the lack of punishment, but also the deindividuation of net citizens. Compared to Americans, Japanese and Koreans are careful in not having their actual names being clear on the internet and social media. They value hiding their individual identity, and that contributes to deindividuation. This is just my perspective, but I feel Japanese people use VPNs more as well, to hide their IP addresses. Protecting their individuality, they commit harassment and in extreme terms crimes, for they know they won’t get caught or suffer severe consequences. The lyrics of Warota People does portray that, in how deindividuation is used to lynch people with words.
The Japanese government has started to reform the laws recently, but I doubt their competence to do that. There are too many things the government needs to do, and I am cynical about their ability to accomplish all of them. Of course the punishment for committing crimes of slander and homicide using the internet need to be more strict, but that’s not it. There is a need for government to make a more competent cybercrime investigation agency. There is a need for government to educate people about the crime using the internet, and its consequences. There is a need for government to create programs to track down more suspects faster, so they pay their price. There is a need for government to give more access and knowledge of how to report these crimes. There is a need for service providing companies to cooperate in catching cyber criminals. And there is a need for all people to understand that homicide or assault, regardless of being verbal or physical, is a serious crime. Granting all of these needs will take a long time, but without starting reform, the problem won’t go away.
Music video of Warota People: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpdmskJ0arM
References:
“Hana Kimura Death: Cyberbullying Suspect Faces Possible Charges.” Nikkei Asia, Nikkei Asia, 16 Dec. 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Society/Hana-Kimura-death-Cyberbullying-suspect-faces-possible-charges.
“【MV】ワロタピーポー / NMB48[公式].” YouTube, uploaded by NMB48, 29 Nov. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpdmskJ0arM.
“ワロタピーポー: Warota People: The Lol People.” STUDIO48 ♪ , http://stage48.net/studio48/warotapeople.html.