RConversation

Creative Commons gets star power in Hong Kong

Creative Commons is getting hip in Hong Kong: Cantopop starlet and actress Ella Koon has released her photo gallery and desktop/mobile wallpaper under a Creative Commons Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Ella Koon has parked her website at a ".asia" domain. Edmon Chung, DotAsia's CEO, has been encouraging ".asia" clients to use Creative Commons licenses whenever it makes sense to do so. For Ella Koon, it makes a great deal of sense to release photos with "some rights reserved" instead of "all rights reserved" so that her fans can legally share her pictures and create fan art with them, as long as they attribute the original source. Since she has used a non-commercial license, that means for-profit media can't freely use the photos without permission or (if she demands it) payment, just as in the traditional "all rights reserved." But fans are free to use them as they wish, as long as they don't try to sell them and adhere to the "share alike" requirement and share any new works under the same kind of CC license.

Until now, though, Hong Kong users haven't been able to use CC licenses localized under Hong Kong law. On Saturday that will change with the launch of CC Hong Kong. With licenses adapted by Hong Kong IP lawyers to stand up in Hong Kong court, web businesses like the Hong Kong-based blogging portal MySinablog are getting ready to make them available as a publishing option for their users.

If you'd like to learn more about how you can use Creative Commons or just want to know what's been keeping me so busy over the past few months, please join us for our launch ceremony and festival celebration on Saturday at the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, 135 Junction Road, Kowloon.

Or perhaps a stronger incentive might be a chance to meet CC founder Lawrence Lessig and CC's current CEO Joi Ito?  Nutshell schedule:

Main Programme, Inauguration with special guests (2:00 - 3:30pm)

• Professor Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, Founder of Creative Commons
• Mr. Joichi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons
• Panel discussion with Pindar Wong (Chairman of CCHK's Preparatory Executive Committee), Charles Mok (Hong Kong Internet Society), and Edmon Chung of DotAsia

Festival activities (noon-2 p.m and 3:30-6pm)

• OpenCourseWare Presentation
• Photographs Exhibit (Hong Kong Flickr Groups)
• Script reading of “An Instant Patriot” - a play by Mrs. Elizabeth Wong
• Live Music ( Snoblind )
• The Making of CC Documentaries ( v-artivist and inmedia)
• Hong Kong Bloggers workshop (Panelists: Jacky See, Poon Wing Hang, Jeff Au Yeung)

Full program with a lot more details can be downloaded here (PDF). Maps, directions, and online registration here.

And that's not all: On Friday from 5-6:30pm come hear Prof. Lessig give a public lecture titled: "Free Culture and Free Society: Can the West Love Both?" Lessig has just come out with a new book, Remix.

Another exciting development: DotAsia has just announced a new partnership with Creative Commons to help promote the use of CC licenses in Asia, and to help facilitate more active collaboration between CC-user communities in different Asian countries. A new website, creativecommons.asia, has just been set up. The plan is for the new CC Asia site to serve as a hub and platform for Asia-wide creative collaboration.

Still not entirely sure what CC is all about? Here's a gorgeous new video, "A shared culture" in which CC's founders and key community members talk about the philosophy behind it:

Why Hong Kong needs Creative Commons

Joi Ito - who is among other things Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons - passed through Hong Kong this week. Yusuf Goolamabbas over at Outblaze did a quick interview with Joi and Pindar Wong (the guy who brought the Internet to Hong Kong) about why Hong Kong needs Creative Commons. He mentioned our efforts to create a local Hong Kong version of the "some rights reserved" licenses and that we are seeking community feedback on the license draft. If all goes well, we hope to launch the CC-HK license officially in mid-June. Want more information or want to get involved? Click here.

Some quotes from Joi and Pindar:

PINDAR:

 

Weve built the number two, number three infrastructure in the world over the last ten years. So what are we going to do with it? Now, if we're going to have a not very forward-looking copyright regime that binds us, shackles us, it's quite clear that the creative community in Hong Kong - music, film, the arts - their ability to mix, mash, be creative is somehow not factored in to the current view of the law. So all we're trying to do is say, look. It's not necessarily "all rights reserved," it's also "some rights reserved." Lets try and use the existing copyright regime and make licensing - look at the licensing aspect. Not everyone by nature wants to fall foul of copyright law, but give us some options. It's not that we don't want to obey the law, its that we do want to have a license, but make it easier for us to get a license. Furthermore, give us some choices as far as the types of license we can get. Therefore Creative Commons has been around, weve looked at it we all know it. Many of us who are involved in the industry worldwide have said "hey look its quite strange we don't have Creative Commons in Hong Kong." Why not? Why don't we go and do it? So that's what we've done."

...Hong Kong is one of the freest economies in the world. So let the market decide. The Creative Commons license should be there by default. Once it's there then we can start doing things that are very interesting... This is a starting point not an ending point.

JOI:

...The problem is that the mass production and delivery of content is the main model that people want to use the internet for, but then you might as well use cable. That's fine for broadcast thats not a bad architecture... but the internet is really for peer to peer communication. And the problem is that if you don't create a legal regime that allows you to do it, people will do it anyway but it will be illegal. And so by causing people to do illegal things, its also one of these thing where people figure well, if I'm breaking the law anyway.. I might as well go all the way. So the minute you make people into pirates, you call them criminals and terrorists like they did in the United States, then theyre going to come back at you, they're going to attack you, they're going to treat  you like the man. So what Creative Commons is trying to do is get everybody to the table, get everybody to follow the rule of law, respect each other's needs, and say everyone has the right to have a choice.

...What you're fighting for right now is the attention of a person.

...Whats really a pity is that this Hollywood regime is infecting other governments into thinking that by having a strong copyright regime they will encourage the content business. When in fact by encouraging the amateur business they may sell more video cameras and televisions and network connections and bandwith, and we would probably make a lot more money supporting the sharing economy in asia than we would trying to build a hollywood inside Hong Kong.

Here's the video:

Unfamiliar with Creative Commons? Watch this then:

To learn more, and perhaps even get involved, visit the Hong Kong Fans of Creative Commons wiki.

Bringing Creative Commons to Hong Kong

(photos by Charles Mok)

On Monday night my center hosted a meeting for people interested in bringing Creative Commons to Hong Kong.

In case you haven't heard of it before, Creative Commons is an alternative approach to copyright.  In this Internet age, many people are creating and sharing their works for non-commercial or only partially commercial reasons.  The point is not to advocate piracy: many artists, authors, entertainment companies and news organizations want tight control over the usage rights to their work so that they can make maximum profit from every single thing they create, and they have a right to do so.  (Although CC founder Larry Lessig does think that U.S. copyright law has gone overboard.) But many other people are more interested in seeing their works used and distributed as widely as possible than they are in making money off those works, as long as they receive credit and recognition for their creations. Creative Commons licenses enable us to do this.  CC is especially useful for non-profit, publicly funded, and educational content, but there are commercial artists and Internet companies who also use these licenses. I know musicians and photographers who have found it profitable to put out at least part of their work for free on the web under a CC license because doing so helps them gain a loyal audience and reputation, which in turn leads to paid work or performance opportunities that they would not have gotten otherwise.

The CC licenses are being localized for a growing number of legal jurisdictions, including for Mainland China and Taiwan. But nobody has yet localized them for Hong Kong.  Our meeting on Monday formed a group that will spearhead the localization of Creative Commons licenses for Hong Kong law, then work on promoting the use of CC in Hong Kong and educate people in Hong Kong about how to use them. We've set up a wiki site with more information, which anybody interested in helping bring Creative Commons to Hong Kong can join.

Here is an excellent video that explains Creative Commons:

...and here is an interview with Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig about how it all works:

HK Digital Copyright Update...and Peter Yu's Google juice!

Last week I wrote about the excellent position paper on digital copyright in Hong Kong written by Peter Yu in response to the Hong Kong government's proposed copyright reforms - many of which are ill-advised, could harm freedom of expression in Hong Kong, and don't take the interests of all Hong Kong people  into full consideration.

Peter has followed up with an Op-Ed in the South China Morning Post.

He asks: "Should we turn into criminals the future pillars of our society? Should we slow development of internet services to protect creators of digital content? Should we sacrifice privacy, free speech and a free press in the name of copyright protection?"

Then he answers: "While the copyright holders' concerns are understandable, some of the medicine prescribed in the paper is, unfortunately, worse than the diseases it claims exist." (emphasis mine)

The SCMP puts their articles behind a paid firewall, but we have reproduced the whole thing for your reading pleasure here. (Peter holds the copyright for the piece, in case you were wondering.)

I was tickled pink to discover today that when I went to Google and typed in: hong kong digital copyright, Peter's position paper is the first result, followed by my blog posts on the subject - all ahead of the government consultation document! That means Peter and I are getting more incoming links than the government document. (Screenshot below for posterity.)

This is why I keep telling people: if you want to get attention on a policy issue you care about, you need to put your position papers on the web, you need to make them blogger-friendly and get bloggers linking to them, and ideally you need to be blogging about them yourself. Getting media coverage and putting articles in the newspaper is not enough, especially if those media organizations don't make their content freely available on the web.

Response to HK Govt Consultation on Digital Copyright

Thanks to the hard work of our friend and ally Prof. Peter Yu, on Monday my colleagues and I at the Journalism and Media Studies Ctr managed to hand in a lengthy response to the Hong Kong Government's Consultation Document on Copyright Protection in the Digital Age, authored by Peter.

I've blogged about the proposed legal changes and their numerous problems here, here and here.

The paper is titled Digital Copyright  Reform in Hong Kong: Promoting Creativity Without Sacrificing Free Speech.  It begins:

...this position paper addresses issues that lie at the intersection of copyright reform and the protection of free speech, free press, and privacy.  In particular, the paper examines the benefits and shortcomings of criminal liability for unauthorized uploading and downloading of copyrighted works, a notice and takedown procedure for online service providers, a subpoena mechanism to facilitate copyright infringement actions, and statutory damages for copyright infringement.  In addition to offering recommendations on whether and how copyright law should be revised, the paper also highlights the opportunities for Hong Kong created by the digital revolution.  The paper contends that, if Hong Kong is to further develop its knowledge-based economy and to become a regional hub for digital technology, it needs to define copyright reform more broadly to include future authors, user communities, and not-for-profit organizations.

Lengthy sections are devoted to proposed reforms on criminal liability, notice and takedown procedure, subpoena mechanism and statutory damages. It considers other alternative options and makes some recommendations (I am summarizing the bullet points, read the document for full explanations):

    * Introduce a broad fair use privilege.

    * Introduce a format shifting exception that would allow copyright holders to reproduce legitimately purchased copyrighted works in different formats. 

    * Introduce a ‘safe harbour' for innovators to develop products that are capable of substantial non-infringing use. 

    * Introduce a special exception for the use of online materials by educational and research institutions. 

    * Broaden the privilege for unauthorized use of online materials for news reporting purposes. 

    *  Explore the use of levies to facilitate private copying.

    *  Facilitate the use of orphan works on the Internet.  (Orphan works are works for which their authors can no longer be found.) 

    * Explore government support of open access initiatives and new flexible copyright regimes.  Examples of these initiatives include open format for government documents, open access journals, and Creative Commons. 

    * Facilitate interoperability of new communications software, platforms, and technologies. 

    * Limit the protection of government works in the digital environment.  Government works should be freely available for reproduction and distribution on the Internet.

    *  Ensure proper labelling of goods that deploy digital rights management to restrict consumer rights.

It concludes:

The advent of the Internet and new communications technologies has posed serious challenges to copyright holders.  However, it has also created many new opportunities.  Indeed, through the use of these technologies, people can now converse with others via e-mail and online chats, look up information in virtual libraries, increase knowledge by taking distance-learning courses, publish social commentaries on their own websites, and develop social communities in the virtual world.  If Hong Kong is to further develop its knowledge-based economy and to become a regional hub for digital technology (rather than a hub for only digital content), it needs to take advantage of the promise of the Internet and the opportunities innovation affords.

As in other parts of the world, there remains a very serious unauthorized copying problem on the Internet in Hong Kong.  However, the solution to the problem may not necessarily be copyright law reform.  As this position paper has shown, many of the reform proposals would incur significant socio-economic costs, which at times have outweighed their benefits.  There are also many other effective alternative non-legislative proposals that are not mentioned in the consultation document.  If policy makers are to undertake an complete and accurate assessment of the needs for copyright law reform, they cannot limit stakeholders to copyright holders and Internet services alone; instead, they need to include future authors, user communities, and not-for-profit organizations (such as schools and libraries).  They also need to take advantage of the research and empirical data that have now become available abroad.  The Internet today is very different from the Internet in the mid-1990s, when Internet-related legislation first emerged.

Copyright reform cannot be based on a leap of faith; it has to be based on a careful empirical assessment of the local needs, interests, and goals.  A holistic copyright law reform that takes into account of the various stakeholders not only would be socially beneficial, but also would set an important example for other countries that are struggling with similar legal problems and policy challenges.  Instead of staying behind or playing catch-up, a well-managed copyright law reform would move Hong Kong to the forefront of the Internet debate.

It will be interesting to see what the government actually ends up doing.

Digital Copyright: What is really in the Hong Kong people's interest?

The Hong Kong government's consultation period on proposed changes to Hong Kong's digital copyright law is winding down. The last day for submissions is on April 30th. InMedia Hong Kong is calling for more people to make their voices heard.

The South China Morning Post reported on Sunday that only 182 responses to the government consultation paper have been submitted. Five from organizations and 177 from individuals.

InMedia and OpenKnowledge are calling on the government to re-do the consultation. Why? Because not enough has been done to solicit public response.  Their position paper can be downloaded in Chinese as a PDF here. Among other things, they call for the government to include consideration of flexible copyright systems (like Creative Commons) and the concept of fair use in a revised consultation. They are also opposed to the criminalization of downloading by individuals, nonprofits, and educational institutions. 

Meanwhile, here in academia land we are preparing out own submission.  Intellectual property law professor Peter Yu and Charles Mok, head of the Hong Kong Internet Society, spoke at a seminar here at Hong Kong University last Thursday. They pointed to a lot of ways in which the proposed legal changes would be potentially harmful to freedom of expression in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong government's consultation paper proposes "take-down" provisions and an approach to service provider liability for content similar to the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act.  You may have heard about how Viacom has issued large numbers of DMCA take-down notices to YouTube alleging that tend of thousands of video clips have violated their copyright. The problem is, many people whose video has nothing to do with Viacom content have had their clips taken down erroneously. In other cases, people who have a strong case that the content they posted falls within "fair use" guidelines for critical and educational purposes have still had their material taken down.  Unless they happen to be a law professor, most people just give up at that stage. The San Francisco based Electronic Fronteer Foundation has been fighting hard for reform of the DMCA since it was enacted in 1998.  (Photos courtesy of Sky Canaves.)

In his talk last week, Peter made a strong case that the people of Hong Kong should be concerned about over-enthusiastic emulation of the DMCA. In the U.S. the DMCA has been prone to intentional abuse by those who want to silence critics and whistle-blowers.  (For details read this PDF document.) Peter pointed to specific cases in which companies have abused the DMCA to get service providers to take down content that was simply critical of them or which advertised competitive pricing, wrongfully claiming copyright violation in order to get the content removed. How do we guard against companies here in Hong Kong doing the same thing to use copyright as an excuse to silence critical consumer groups? What's more, copying the DMCA too closely here in Hong Kong could result not only in companies, but also other powerful "copyright holding entities" (which is pretty much anybody) using exaggerated allegations of copyright violation to silence speech they don't like.  How will the Hong Kong government prevent such abuses? The consultation document does not say.   

Another issue has to do with the consultation document's approach to criminal liability. He believes that the punishment needs to be more "proportional" to the actual harm committed. Which means that people who are file sharing and downloading for non-commercial reasons should not be treated in the same way as people who are doing so for direct financial benefit. Otherwise, you are turning most of Hong Kong's population technically into criminals, and certainly most of its young people. What are the consequences of this?

Peter didn't say this outright, but a couple of questions arise in my mind, also unanswered by the consultation document: Might the existence of illegally obtained movies on the hard drive of a government critic be used as an excuse to put him in jail???  What about a journalist who does a hard-hitting, muckraking report? Might she get a call from somebody the night before it is published saying "Greetings. We have learned from your ISP that somebody using  your home computer downloaded 100 songs illegally in the last month. (meaningful silence)...."

In Peter's view, copyright reform is not the only way to address the issues Hong Kong's entertainment industry faces. What's more, the digital environment should not just be defined as a commercial environment: it also includes digital lifestyle, access to knowledge, political discourse, and many other things. The government has an opportunity to take advantage of the Internet's promise - and the opportunities for innovation it affords. Not just approach it as a threat to some of Hong Kong's most vocal industries. Any new laws that do get passed need to be based "on empirical research rather than a leap of faith." More alternatives need to be explored. There is no upside to acting too hastily if you are taking the interests of all Hong Kong people to heart.

Charles Mok also emphasized that the consultation document does not adequately deal with protection of the rights of Internet users. Assuming the government here believes they should have some. People in Hong Kong should be entitled to fair use of material for educational purposes and also in the context of political and social criticism. He cites the UK's independent review of intellectual property, called the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, which was much more comprehensive in the way that it addressed users' rights and the question of fair use.

Mok points out that the entertainment industry in Hong Kong is one big cartel. Is it the Hong Kong government's job to protect its cartels? Or shouldn't its responsibility be more broadly towards the rights and long-term interests of the Hong Kong people?

He also points out that if ISP's are required to retain more user data in order to help catch copyright violators, the possibility for abuse of that information also increases. "The more data you keep, the more likelihood of a screwup," he said. Indeed.

InMedia and OpenKnowledge, plus some other groups, say they are planning to organize a collective submission action to the Commerce and Trade Bureau this Friday. If you are writing a submission yourself, they ask that you "cc:" it to openknowledghk AT gmail DOT com so that they can include it in the submission tally of critical responses.

It would be great if somebody has the time to translate their full position paper in accurate detail. (Also, the video of InMedia's April 1st "Copyright=Creativity?" event, conducted in Mandarin and Cantonese, has been uploaded to DotSUB, and is now awaiting one or two volunteers to help with the translation and subtitling.)

As Sunday's SCMP article pointed out, a lot of Hong Kong internet users are concerned, but so far they have been voicing their concerns in more informal ways, such as this protest video posted on YouTube:

UPDATE (April 25): I don't know how I missed this but Oiwan Lam reports over at Global Voices that a group of Hong Kong netizens have organized a new Chinese-language BBS forum about this issue, article23.net. She writes:

The organizers compared the proposal in the government digital copyright consultation as the notorious article 23 in Basic Law which led to half a milion people demonstration in 2003. The BBS forum is to share information concerning digital copyright issue and possible mobilization against the copyright legislation.

Digital Copyright reform in Hong Kong: going the wrong way?

The Hong Kong government's consultation document on Copyright Protection in the Digital Environment seeks to help entertainment and software businesses defend against digital piracy. But it has raised a number of concerns about whether the proposed legal changes might harm consumer interests, put a damper on innovation, and potentially have negative implications for freedom of expression in Hong Kong.

Tomorrow (5pm Thursday local time) we will be examining these issues here at Hong Kong University.  Peter Yu, an intellectual property and communications law expert now based in Michigan, will give a lecture asking questions such as: "Do we need online copyright reforms? Can the reforms effectively target the digital piracy problem? Would the new laws create unintended consequences? Are there other alternatives besides copyright law revision?"

Charles Mok of the Hong Kong Internet Society will also be there to comment. Charles recently wrote an article expressing concerns about the proposed legal changes. He believes that the interests of consumers and service providers have not been adequately taken into account:

Although the consultation paper in Hong Kong also admits that "we also have to take into account possible concerns in the community about the impact that stronger copyright protection in the digital environment may have on the free dissemination of information and protection of personal privacy," the issues raised in the paper are all about strengthening enforcement, with nothing about how consumer rights can be enhanced, or how innovation can be encouraged with these measures beyond a simple-minded assumption.

Charles also spoke at a recent event titled "Copyright = Creativity" organized by Hong Kong InMedia and the Open Knowledge Project. (I blogged it here.) I am embedding the video of the entire event shot by one of my hard-working students at the bottom of this post. The meeting was conducted in Mandarin and Cantonese...if somebody out there wants to subtitle the video via DotSub (or any other way), then re-post it to the web, that would be a tremendous service to the community!

Here is InMedia's position on the consultation paper:

Many has pointed out that the consultation is based on the interest of corporate copyright holders rather than individuals and consumers. Worse still, some suggestions within the consultation papers are threatening to freedom of speech and expression, and eventually the development of creative industry in Hong Kong.

Even though a major trend of internet copyright is the adaptation of flexible license system, such as creative commons, which would encourage fair use and free distribution of information within the Internet. However, there is no mentioning of such practice in the whole consultation document.

In the Internet, consumers are also producers; many internet users would upload writings, photos, music and video clips onto the Internet and share with each other. Web-based forums, internet media, blogs, and etc. are significant spaces for civic participation; Moreover, teachers are using the Internet to facilitate their teaching and interacting with the students. However, the consultation has not considered such needs and has not evaluated the impact of old media copyright to this newly emerged public and creative space.

As Ben Ng wrote at the bottom of that post, "it is time for us to establish Creative Commons in Hong Kong and to show our concerns." Agreed.

Jonathan Cheng (now at the WSJ) wrote two good articles about the proposed legal changes for the Hong Kong standard back in December. Click here and here.

For those of you who know Mandarin and Cantonese, you can watch Part 1 here:

...and Part II here:

Web innovation: Why Hong Kong lags behind Mainland China and Taiwan

Consider the following:

• Mainland China and Taiwan have both embraced Creative Commons. There is no Creative Commons Hong Kong.

• Both mainland China and Taiwan have active open source software development communities. Hong Kong does not have an open source geek community to speak of. (UPDATE: Tom asserts in the comments section that this statement is "plain wrong." Would love to hear from others on this.)

• Both the Mainland China and Taiwan are seeing much more Web2.0 innovation than Hong Kong - which appears to have almost none going on. (This is based not only on my own observation. Everybody I know who runs or invests in Internet companies around Greater China says the same thing: the action is everywhere but here.)

Why? And to what extent are these three things connected?

There are no doubt many complicated reasons.  Anybody reading this who would like to add their two or three cents in the comments section below, please feel free.

The above three points and two questions - but not too many clear answers - came up in a seminar I attended on Sunday titled Copyright = Creativity? organized by Hong Kong In-Media and the Open Knowledge Project.   

There were three speakers: Isaac Mao, mainland Chinese blogger and entrepreneur, "Titan" Deng Chieh of Wikimedia Taiwan, and Charles Mok of the Hong Kong Internet Society.

Interestingly, both mainland China and Taiwan have developed more similar approaches to copyright, as both have chafed under pressures from the United States to crack down on copyright violations more than they feel is really in their national interest.

Isaac and Titan both pointed out that all countries need to find a middle ground between too little and over-zealous copyright protection. If there is too little (which has been China's problem) everybody steals everything and there is no incentive for creation. If there is  over-zealous copyright protection (which many believe is now the situation in the U.S. and in Hong Kong) the law is used to reinforce powerful monopoly control over what is or isn't a "legal" creative work, making it more difficult for individual and entrepreneurial innovation to take place.

Isaac believes that the growth of blogging and the expansion of Web2.0 in China is connected to the fact that the Chinese take an expansive view of content sharing - some might argue over-expansive, but he believes that the "free culture approach," and a generous approach in terms of what constitutes "fair use" and "public domain," has been critical. 

We are entering a "post copyright" era, he believes. "The past was an era of macro-creation," with cultural works being produced by big companies. "Now we also have to protect the interests of micro-creators," he says.  The problem is that traditional copyright approaches - including Hong Kong's approach - tend to protect the big players while suppressing the emergence of smaller players.

Isaac said that filmmakers in China are realizing that letting netizens sample their films in spoofs and fan-works actually helps drive up box office sales. He said that Chen Kaige withdrew his lawsuit against internet spoofer Hu Ge after realizing that all the spoofing actually generated more buzz around the movie and caused more people to watch it.   Treating your fans as criminals is bad business in the long run. A middle ground needs to be found.

Titan Deng put it this way: "What's more important? The development of a rich human culture or protection of individual capital? Where do we find the balance?" What happens when there is too much emphasis on the latter, at the expense of the former? 

He made this analogy: If you open a restaurant and serve steak, for which you must supply knives, do you put all your customers under surveillance pre-emptively lest they commit murder with those knives?

For this reason, he said, Creative Commons in Taiwan is growing fast. The Taiwan Intellectual Property Office publishes all of its works under a Creative Commons license, as do a growing number of other groups in Taiwan, including several well-known musical artists.

So why is Hong Kong lagging behind? Charles Mok started by discussing the Hong Kong government's latest Consultation Paper on Copyright Protection in the Digital Environment.

Charles pointed out that the government document never actually defines what the "digital environment" is, though it seems to start from the same premise as the big entertainment companies: that the digital environment is a bad place where people break the law, and which must thus be controlled as much as possible.

Thus, because the government document doesn't approach the digital environment as anything beyond what the entertainment industry perceives it to be, it fails to address any creative or broader alternatives beyond what the industry proposes. 

Certainly, a lot of businesses are being hurt by illegal downloading, Charles acknowledged. It's not like the Internet should be a total free-for-all with no law at all. But is a punitive approach - which treats all internet users as potential criminals to be controlled as much as possible - really going to be a constructive approach?

Will that really help Hong Kong economically in the long run? Or will it ensure that Hong Kong's Internet and online media sectors continue to lag even further behind the Mainland China and Taiwan?

Charles pointed out that the Hong Kong government has not adequately considered the concept of "fair use," and how it might be better defined at very least for non-profit and educational purposes.  Alternative copyright regimes like Creative Commons are not raised at all in the document.

Nor does the document address the question of how to prevent unfair monopolies, and the use of copyright law by monopolies to prevent competition.

He also pointed out that the Internet is challenging the business model of all kinds of media, and especially the entertainment industry worldwide.

Of course they'd prefer not change their business model. It is inevitable, but draconian IP laws are their last gasp at resisting change. Why should government and law be helping them so much, when such resistance actually holds back innovation and prevents new business models from being conceived, let alone adopted?

Further, Charles pointed out that the government here is willing to criminalize music file sharing, but is not willing to criminalize the use of pirated software by businesses. Why is that? 

There was also much discussion of the fact that Hong Kong's ISP's and network operators will be required to hang on to user data for much longer periods of time, and that a result of some of the proposed measures could be greater, less transparent and less accountable surveillance of users - ostensibly to catch IP violators but who knows how else the data gets used.

In sum, Mok's argument is that entrenched industry must not be allowed to dominate and define the entire conversation about copyright in Hong Kong. Other voices must be brought into the mix in a way that is more balanced, not just as an afterthought. Or it will be to Hong Kong's long-run detriment.

UPDATES: For more on Mok's critique of the government consultation paper, read HK govt focuses on enforcement in IP legislation in Computerworld Hong Kong.

Also, one reader has  e-mailed to point out that Creative Commons "actually wanted to have CC-HK, but they couldn't locate a HK lawyer to translate the license to make sure it's workable under HK laws." Anybody out there?

Another reader writes: "I don't think the legal aspect is the only reason why Hong Kong is not Web 2.0, the whole culture of sharing, or "web culture". Perhaps you can draw parallels to the lack of culture, after all China and Taiwan are far richer culturally than Hong Kong, people enjoy their time in different ways compared to Hong Kong which is too pragmatic and money oriented."  Good point.