Focus on the four legislative highlights of the Regulations on the Protection of Minors’ Network
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 28th Title: Focus on the four legislative highlights of the Regulations on the Protection of Minors’ Network.
Xinhua News Agency "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters Bai Yang and Wang Sibei
The State Council recently promulgated the Regulations on the Network Protection of Minors, which will come into force on January 1, 2024. This is the first specialized comprehensive legislation on network protection for minors in China, focusing on regulating the content of network information, protecting personal information, and preventing network addiction.
At the routine briefing on the State Council policy held on the 27th, responsible persons of the National Network Information Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Education and the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League interpreted the regulations.
Focus on the outstanding problems of network protection for minors
Statistics show that as of June 2023, the number of netizens in China has reached 1.079 billion, and the number of underage netizens has exceeded 191 million.
"While minors facilitate and enrich their study and life through the Internet, they also face many risks such as violation of laws and bad information, disclosure of personal information, internet addiction and cyber bullying. Protecting the legitimate rights and interests of minors in cyberspace has become a key task of cyberspace governance. " Wang song, deputy director of the national network information office, said that the regulations responded to the concerns of all sectors of society about the network protection of minors and marked a new stage in the construction of the rule of law for the network protection of minors in China.
Zhang Yaoming, director of the First Legislative Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, said that the regulations focused on outstanding issues, combined with the physical and mental health development of minors and the regular characteristics of cyberspace, refined the existing systems of the Law on the Protection of Minors, the Law on the Protection of Personal Information and the Law on Cyber Security, and improved the pertinence and operability of the legal system.
For example, in the protection of personal information, the regulations stipulate the obligations of guardian education to guide minors to enhance their awareness and ability of personal information protection and guide minors to exercise related rights; Put forward the requirements for personal information processors to strictly set the access rights of minors’ personal information and carry out personal information compliance audit.
In the prevention and control of internet addiction, the regulations require teachers to improve the early identification and intervention ability of underage students’ internet addiction, and strengthen guardians’ guidance on minors’ safe and rational use of the internet; Internet service providers should reasonably limit the amount of online consumption of minors, and guard against and resist bad value orientations such as traffic supremacy; Online game service providers should establish and improve the rules of the game to prevent minors from indulging in the network.
Strengthen the standardization of contents related to adolescents’ physical and mental health.
The colorful online world has created infinite possibilities for the vast number of teenagers. However, some illegal and bad information on the internet also has a serious impact on its healthy growth.
Wang song said that the regulations set up a special chapter to regulate the content of network information, clarify the network information that is conducive to the healthy growth of minors, and further strengthen the regulation of network information.
The regulations clearly stipulate that the state encourages and supports the production, reproduction, publication and dissemination of network information that promotes socialist core values, advanced socialist culture, revolutionary culture and excellent Chinese traditional culture, casts a solid sense of the Chinese nation community, cultivates minors’ feelings for home and country and good morality, and guides minors to develop good living habits and behavior habits; No organization or individual is allowed to produce, copy, publish or disseminate online information that is harmful to the physical and mental health of minors, such as promoting obscenity, pornography, violence, cults, superstitions, gambling, inducing self-mutilation, terrorism, separatism and extremism.
Wang song said that the national network information office will actively cooperate with all relevant parties, deepen special actions, focus on rectifying outstanding problems such as fabricating and disseminating illegal and bad information, and using new technologies and applications to generate vulgar content, and continuously purify the network environment; Strengthen network law enforcement and rectify outstanding problems that endanger the physical and mental health of minors.
Promote judicial protection of minors’ rights and interests.
One of the highlights of the Regulations is that it is linked with the Regulations on Administrative Penalties for Public Security and the Criminal Law, so as to clarify the legal responsibilities for violations of the regulations and violations of the legitimate rights and interests of minors.
"We actively participate in the whole process of judicial protection, and comprehensively use criminal, civil, administrative and public interest litigation ‘ Four major prosecutors ’ Functions, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of minors, and promote the protection and governance of minors’ networks according to law. " Qi Jie, director of the Ninth Procuratorate of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, said.
It is reported that from January 2020 to September this year, procuratorial organs have prosecuted 11,600 adults for allegedly using telecommunication networks to infringe on minors. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate also issued guiding cases on issues such as coercing girls to take nude photos through online chat, and established the principle of prosecution that indecent acts without physical contact are equivalent to offline crimes. At present, more than 3,000 people have been prosecuted. In view of the phenomenon of infringing on the physical and mental health of minors through the internet, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate issued the "No.6 Procuratorial Proposal" to urge relevant departments to promote comprehensive management; Focus on the development of new formats on the Internet, and urge relevant departments to introduce work norms such as prohibiting e-sports hotels from receiving minors in violation of regulations.
Yan Jie said that the procuratorial organs will take the implementation of the regulations as an opportunity to further strengthen procuratorial and judicial protection and create a clear and safe network environment for minors.
Form a joint force of social governance, convergence and protection
Network protection of minors is a systematic project, which needs to bring together all parties.
The regulations will adhere to social co-governance as an important requirement for minors’ network protection, stipulate the responsibilities of relevant government departments, schools, families, industry organizations, news media and other parties, and clarify the protection obligations of network product and service providers, personal information processors, intelligent terminal product manufacturers and sellers.
You Sen, head of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, said that the Ministry of Education will further strengthen the network literacy education for minors according to the requirements of the regulations and incorporate network literacy education into the quality education content of schools; Based on the main channel of classroom education, we should implement the curriculum requirements of ideological and political (morality and rule of law) and information technology in primary and secondary schools, and promote the organic integration of network literacy and related courses.
Yue Wei, director of the Youth Rights Protection Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, said that league organizations at all levels will focus on protecting the legitimate rights and interests of minors by creating a working brand of "protecting the rights and interests of young people". Vigorously implement the online Communist Youth League project, launch high-quality online cultural products, and create a distinctive youth network protection system.
Li Changxi, director of the Network Rule of Law Bureau of the National Network Information Office, said that the regulations put forward special obligations such as carrying out the impact assessment of minors’ network protection, providing minors’ models or setting up minors’ areas, and establishing and improving the network protection compliance system for minors.
"These measures are conducive to further compacting the main responsibility of large-scale network platforms and protecting the healthy development of minors." Li Changxi said.
