If your private emails can be casually browsed through search engines, how would you react?
Lawyer Guo Li from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, is precisely preparing to claim 1 million yuan in compensation from two websites, Baidu and Wanwang. This lawsuit will be heard in the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing on the morning of December 7, and this case is also known as China's first email privacy leak case. The plaintiff, Guo Li, insists that the two websites, Baidu and Wanwang, have violated his personal privacy rights and copyright. In addition to demanding a public apology from the two websites, he also demands 1 million yuan in compensation for mental distress.
Private Emails Publicly "Shared" Online for a Full Month
The cause of this lawsuit is not complicated. Last July, Zhejiang lawyer Guo Li sent a private email to one of Wanwang's email addresses. However, one month later, he discovered that when searching for information related to himself on Baidu, the title and link of this email were prominently listed, allowing people to browse it at will. Guo Li thus reported the situation to the two websites and requested the removal of related content. It was only after one month that his request was fulfilled, and his private email was publicly available on the internet for over 30 days.
As a lawyer, Guo Li believes that emails, as a common communication tool in the information age, should also possess citizens' rights to communication freedom and communication secrecy, which are protected by law. The actions of these two websites resulted in his private email being made public on the internet, and both parties must bear corresponding legal responsibilities for this. On January 26 this year, Guo Li filed a lawsuit with the Xiaoshan District People's Court of Hangzhou. The court officially accepted the case on March 6 and recognized it as China's first infringement lawsuit case involving the illegal linking and public disclosure of private emails.
The case, originally scheduled for trial on April 2, was transferred to the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing for hearing due to jurisdictional objections raised by Baidu and Wanwang. On December 3, Guo Li received the summons from the Haidian District People's Court, notifying him that the case would officially go to trial at 9:00 AM on December 7.
Demanding Compensation of 1 Million Yuan for Mental Distress
Guo Li is very confident about winning this lawsuit. He acts as his own attorney and has prepared for this case for a long time. "I believe they violated my privacy rights and copyright. Legally speaking, these are two different types of infringements; one is determined by method, and the other by content," Guo Li explained. Private emails should enjoy the right to communication secrecy, but they were disclosed on the internet, and this method of disclosure violated his privacy rights. This email is also his work, and its unauthorized public disclosure without the author's consent constitutes an infringement of his copyright.
Previously, the defendants in the case had communicated with Guo Li. Wanwang even specifically promised in their response to improve website management. "Isn't this precisely proving that they indeed have technical vulnerabilities, and aren't these vulnerabilities repairable?" Guo Li said that the two defendants complement each other and jointly violated his legitimate rights, and they should also jointly bear responsibility.