Ashley Madison, a Canadian-based website, is suing the South Korean government for banning the website geared at hooking up married people for affairs. CEO Noel Biderman of Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison, says that the blocking of the site for “illegal activity” is unjust. Adultery is currently illegal in South Korea, but Biderman says the site produces no content urging infidelity, and wonders why other social media sites aren’t equally penalized on the grounds of encouraging illicit sexual behavior.
Biderman says the site is simply a “social networking site facilitating communication between like-minded adults.” He added, “There is no adultery that happens on Ashley Madison. It’s just publication. We write very little. Our users write everything. So therefore. Facebook would have to be shut down … you can’t selectively pick us and make an example out of us.”
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The site is suing for an unspecified amount of lost revenue and profits. The site is also banned in Singapore, but the company feels the situation in South Korea is different, because it was operating in the country for a few weeks before the shut-down. The site’s motto is “Life is short. Have an affair.”
Ashley Madison claims that South Korea’s own sites were trying to break into the Canadian market. “The defendant’s anti-competitive practices in South Korea have a direct impact in Canada on communications and social networking businesses and websites competing for Korean-Canadian and Asian-Canadian market for such websites.”
