The OpenNet Initiative reports:

On November 20, 2007, the Beijing Communications Administration (BCA) ordered the closure of a popular Internet forum on the Hepatitis B virus (HBV). The Hepatitis B Camp Network of China [肝胆相照论坛 ] (http://hbvhbv.com/) was started in September 2001 and has over 300,000 registered users. Lu Jun, the site administrator, filed a lawsuit last week alleging that the BCA committed an unlawful administrative act in ordering the closure of the site without notice. He is simultaneously pursuing negotiations with the Bureau to re-open the forum. Since its shutdown, the BBS has been hosted overseas.

…According to the complaint, the BBS became inaccessible around 6:00 pm on November 20. The forum’s network access provider stated that the BBS was ordered closed by the BCA, the bureau responsible for the capital city under the Ministry of Information Industry. The BCA’s specific justification for the closure was the Ministry of Health’s 2001 Measures for the Administration of Internet Medical Health Information Services. These Measures state that websites providing medical health information services or publishing medical health information to online users must register with the departments responsible for Internet Information Services (Articles 2, 6). In the complaint, Lu Jun claims that the Hepatitis B Camp Network of China BBS consists entirely of user-generated discussions and forums rather than medical health information services, and therefore did not need to undergo registration procedures. He also cites to both the Measures and the State Council’s Measures on the Management of Internet Information Services, which require that infringing websites be given notice as well as a period of time to ‘cure’ before being shut down.

The article continues by explaining just how serious Hepatitis B is in China: 800 people die daily and 120 million people are thought to be carriers of the virus.

Both the law and the website began in 2001, but the site’s non-compliance was only established last fall. It seems odd to me that a site that has 300,000 users would only be noticed after six years. I don’t know if there was anything on the site that could be construed as providing medical information as opposed to discussing it.

Countries all over the world, and their legal systems, are struggling with how to address this issue. At one level it’s a question of stopping fraudsters and quacks from misleading people. At another level it’s a question of free speech and democratizing access to health care information. It’s a very complex problem that countries and organizations have tried to address via tools such as medical information dissemination laws and/or membership accreditation seals issued by governments and industrial/professional organizations (”trustmarking”). Even those wouldn’t necessarily address what constitutes a public conversation (albeit in written form and “published” on the internet).

Mr. Lu claims that the BCA didn’t follow the appropriate procedure when they shut his site down. That may be true. But I hope that the court examines the far more compelling question of whether or not his site should be subject to the medical information law. No matter how the case is decided, there is an obvious need to clarify the law’s reach.

China has a large, well-educated, online population that use their own traditional medicine as well as that of the west. Health care in China is a big business. It makes for opportunities to abuse the credulous’ trust and to educate the curious. I hope that Mr. Lu’s suit helps to delimit the boundaries. They’re obviously needed.

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