"Human flesh searching" claimed another victim recently. Earlier this month, an 18-year-old girl from Guangdong Province jumped in a river and killed herself.

According to media reports, a clothes shop owner snapped a few shots of the girl from her closed circuit television, and posted them on Sina Weibo, a microblog website with more than 50 million active members. She captioned these photos by saying the girl was a thief, and asking other Net users to use "human flesh searching" on her. Very soon, the young girl's information, including her name, school, home address and even phone number, was exposed, which was said to have led to her death.

This tragedy is not something new to Chinese Net users. In fact, a term has been coined for this way of looking for an anonymous individual from the Internet - "human flesh searching," which is similar to "document tracing" or "doxing."

Liu Zhengrong, an official from the State Internet Information Office, said Tuesday that people who started "human flesh searching" should take legal responsibility if it incurs serious consequences.

"Human flesh searching" was originally the brainchild of Chinese Net users for fun and to satisfy their curiosity. But soon it was employed for some specific causes. Its biggest and widely acclaimed "achievement" is to have uncovered several corrupt officials, whose photos on the Internet have been gathered and carefully examined.

Minor traces such as wearing a luxurious watch could lead them to a charge of corruption. Besides, it is also by resorting to this approach, many "immoral" people, such as the ones who had bullied cats and dogs, were uncovered, and got blamed and cursed by those who have the so-called sense of justice.

That is why when the dark side of "human flesh searching" shows itself, many people, especially the Net users, keep saying no to regulating this approach.

In fact, considering the harm it has caused to many innocent people, there is no difference between the so-called bright and dark side. The nature of such an approach, which is applied by individuals to uncover certain people's privacy, no matter what the cause, can never embody justice.

It is a new kind of soft violence, which is rooted on the disorder and the fast dissemination of information on the Internet. Anyone who has the need to "dox" other people on the Internet should be treated equally as those who break the law in real life.

The Internet is the place where the rule of law should get involved profoundly. It should be a community where neither outlaws nor Robin Hood is needed.