The amendment of the Telecommunications Business Act known as the “anti-Nth room bill,” which obligates cloud storage providers and large value-added service providers to prevent the distribution of digital content involving sexual crimes, went into effect on December 10, and Naver and Kakao have begun applying measures to stop the distribution of illegal videos.

Naver announced that beginning Friday, the company would implement technological and administrative measures to prevent the distribution of illegal videos.

The company has been applying a variety of measures, introducing a function that requests users to report and delete illegal videos--so defined by the amended Telecommunications Business Act--and blocking search results of illicit videos since last December to stop the distribution of such content.

The company explained that they had implemented strong measures against users who registered illegal videos, such as restricting their use of all services as well as deleting the posts in question.

Naver is also blocking the distribution of pornography and illegal content using X-eye, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based video and image filtering technology. The company has also organized various campaigns to create a safe Internet environment, such as the Digital Sex Crime Prevention Campaign and the Green Internet Campaign.

Earlier, on December 3, Kakao announced, “Beginning this coming December 10, the company will apply technological and administrative measures to protect users and stop the distribution of illegal videos in KakaoTalk’s group Open Chat rooms.” The company also released a notice saying, “If users distribute illegal videos, necessary measures to prevent distribution, such as deleting the content, will be taken, and the user can be subject to criminal punishment according to relevant laws.”

These measures will apply to all videos, moving images and compressed files shared on group Open Chat rooms. They will not be applied to general chat rooms and one-on-one Open Chat rooms.

The latest measures by Naver and Kakao were taken in accordance with the enforcement of the revised Telecommunications Business Act, which was amended last December to prevent the distribution of digital content involving sexual crimes. The amendment made it mandatory for cloud storage providers and value-added service providers with annual sales of 1 billion won or more or with a daily average of 100,000 or more users to take technological and administrative measures against the illicit content.