RConversation

6th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference

If you're interested in hearing from academics, entrepreneurs, journalists, and bloggers who study the Chinese Internet, you may be interested in joining us at Hong Kong University next week.

Date/Time: June 13-14, 2008, 8:30-6:30 daily
Venue: Council Chamber, 8/F, Meng Wah Building, University of Hong Kong
Host: Journalism & Media Studies Centre
Languages: English & Putonghua (with simultaneous translation)
Website: www.circ.asia

Held at a different university each year, the annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) brings together academic scholars, policy analysts, industry leaders, journalists and legal practitioners from around the world. This year's conference comes to Hong Kong for the first time, hosted by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre.

This year's conference theme, "China and the Internet: Myths and Realities," seeks to separate fact from fiction about the Internet in China. As the attention of the world will be focused upon the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games, this timely event will explore the political, social, economic, cultural and institutional aspects of Internet development in China.

Panels of scholars will present the latest empirical research as well as qualitative and critical studies of the meaning of information technologies in the Chinese world. The programme also includes roundtable discussions and presentations by some of the people who are shaping the future of China's internet: Chinese bloggers, internet entrepreneurs, journalists and industry experts.

With simultaneous translation in English and Putonghua, the event will be of great interest to anybody who studies Internet developments in China.

For further details and to register, visit: www.circ.asia

Hong Kong 2.0

Congratulations to Charles Mok on the publication of his new book, Hong Kong 2.0!  He had a well-attended launch event on Thursday, at which he asked me to say a few words.

Charles, who has become a good friend and ally over the past year, invited me to write a preface for the book. Since my written Chinese isn't up to the task I wrote it in English and he had it translated. Below is my original English draft.
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Many foreigners show up in Hong Kong and start drawing public conclusions about the place and its people within days of arrival. I can imagine that many Hong Kong people must be quite tired of such instant experts. Thus, as a recently arrived Westerner who speaks no Cantonese, I was surprised that Charles Mok invited me to write this preface.  Yet he insisted, so I will try hard not to waste his readers' precious time.

Having spent altogether 12 years living in Beijing, when I moved to Hong Kong in January 2007 I brought with me many prejudices that Beijing people tend to hold about Hong Kong. According to these prejudices, Hong Kong people are allegedly not very creative, are culturally superficial, materialistic, are easily intimidated, and can be counted on to choose profit over principle.

Charles Mok is one of the many people I've met since moving to Hong Kong who have proven to me that such stereotypes are grossly unfair.

In my limited experience, the most inspiring and exciting people in Hong Kong are not the tycoons, the movie stars, or the celebrity politicians. Hong Kong has many talented individuals who do not dominate the newspaper headlines: entrepreneurs, independent writers and artists, local community leaders, and many others who are doing their own thing in their own way, staying true to their ideals and beliefs, trying to make difference for the people around them.

In Hong Kong version 1.0, it was the tycoons, pop stars, celebrity politicians and the media's favorite "pundits" who had most of the power and influence.  In the 1.0 version of any country or territory, getting attention and having an impact was much more difficult without access to substantial investment capital, without contracts from recording or film studios, without access to a printing press or broadcasting channel, without somebody to publish and distribute your books, without journalists who agree to interview you and put your quotes in the newspaper or soundbites on television, and so forth.

Now Hong Kong and all of the world's modern cities are facing the 2.0 era.  Successful transition from 1.0 to 2.0 will be key for maintaining Hong Kong's competitive edge in the global knowledge economy. In a global knowledge economy, competitiveness increasingly depends on a country or territory's ability to innovate: innovation not only in terms of business, products and services; but also innovation that creates the kind of working and living environment in which the world's top knowledge workers – and their families – can live happy and healthy lives.

As a cosmopolitan, multicultural city with one of the world's most highly educated populations, Hong Kong 2.0 has the potential to be one of the world's most vibrant and creative places. In Hong Kong 2.0, ideas and innovations in all fields would be able to emerge from the "bottom up" rather than from the "top down;" from the "edges" rather than from the "center" – after all, experience shows that the best business ideas and most exciting cultural innovations in the past few years have tended to come from the most unexpected places, and almost never from a government planner's desk.

This is great news if you do not belong to one of the categories of famous people listed above. Internet entrepreneurs are launching startups with small amounts of pooled savings. Independent artists, filmmakers and musicians are increasingly using mobile and internet technologies to get their works known. Bloggers and podcasters who put their creations directly on the Internet are gaining popularity among young people without having to first get a TV or radio show.  Citizen media groups like InMedia have used the internet to organize social movements to preserve Hong Kong's historical heritage. Journalists can publish pointed political analysis directly on their blogs, whether or not their newspaper editors dare to publish it.

But as Charles Mok has pointed out in many of his essays over the past few years, it is not yet clear whether Hong Kong's legislative and regulatory structures will enable Hong Kong to evolve successfully from 1.0 to 2.0 and achieve its full potential. Is Hong Kong capable of truly taking advantage of all that its highly-educated, culturally diverse people have to offer?  Or will the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region potentially squander its potential by sticking to a set of outdated 1.0 style regulatory structures and laws – a system which might favor the entrenched 1.0 interests, but which might also hold Hong Kong back while the world's most competitive cities boldly stride forward to 2.0 and beyond?

The good news is that there are more ways than ever for all of us as Hong Kong residents and citizens to make our views known – both to each other as well as to the people who currently hold power in Hong Kong. In his essays, Charles describes many of those ways, and discusses many of the policy reforms he believes are necessary in order for Hong Kong to transition successfully from 1.0 to 2.0. No doubt you will have other views – you may or may not agree with everything he says. But the point is that if you want the dream of Hong Kong 2.0 to be fulfilled, it's up to you to help make it happen. Don't sit and wait for 1.0 leaders to solve Hong Kong's problems in a top-down 1.0 fashion. We have only ourselves to blame if we sit around waiting for other people to build Hong Kong 2.0, and do nothing about it ourselves.

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Read on for the Chinese translation (use of the terms 老外 and 洋婦 were deliberate)..

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.

Creative Commons - Draft Hong Kong license seeks feedback

Creative Commons licenses are coming to Hong Kong - most likely this year!

Since August, a committed group of people have been working to localize Creative Commons licenses and educate the community about why this alternative approach to copyright will be good for Hong Kong. Check out the video, pictures and notes from our November workshop.

While many people and businesses will always choose to protect their works under traditional "all rights reserved" copyright, many people here in the community are eager to share their creative and intellectual works more broadly in a way that the Creative Commons "some rights reserved" licenses make possible.

Thanks to the hard work of Professors Yahong Li and Alice Lee at the University of Hong Kong law faculty, we now have a draft of the Creative Commons license converted into language that will hopefully hold up under Hong Kong IP law. It has been posted here on the Creative Commons website. We are seeking feedback from the community - particularly from those who understand Hong Kong IP law. If you have questions, criticisms, or comments, please click on the "post a message" link and join the discussion.

As I've mentioned in the past, Hong Kong is behind Mainland China and Taiwan when it comes to Creative Commons and the free culture movement. We're hoping to catch up. I'm pretty optimistic that we will, given that we've got some awesome people committed to the project. One in particular is Ben Cheng who works with me at Hong Kong U. An open source programmer, wikipedian, and dedicated free culture advocate with strong community connections, his work so far has been critical in keeping things going.

In Mainland China, where CC-China Mainland officially launched last year, some scholars are hoping to use CC and the free culture movement as a way to help empower underprivileged groups. Prof. Wang Jing of MIT recently wrote a paper about some of those projects, which can be downloaded here (PDF). My good friend Isaac Mao is also one of the people who first brought the Creative Commons movement to the mainland Chinese web community several years ago.

The Taiwan CC folks are organizing a great meeting for next weekend in Taipei called the International Workshop on Asia and Commons in the Information Age. I'll be giving a talk on Sunday about why free speech needs free culture. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from the other presenters about what's happening around the region, and how our group in Hong Kong can collaborate with people around Asia to promote free culture.

Hong Kong's first Barcamp - a great success!

Hong Kong's web community is full of some really fabulous, energetic people. The first ever Barcamp Hong Kong on Saturday left no doubt about that! Ryanne (the photo above is from her camera) sums it up:

i found myself surrounded by people in firefox, linux and all kinds of web 2.0 shirts; people handing out moo cards, showing off their flickr/cc stickers, giving interactive sessions on ajax, facebook, open social, desktop apps, digital printing, web service scalability...whatever you can think of. free coffee, cookies, chips and sandwiches were provided. it's surprising to see so many talented and generous people in HK who came here to share their love. or just to learn...like why i was there.

Daisy estimates there were probably just under 100 people:

It seems to me that almost 40% were developers, 30% were from business organizations (project manager, start up owner), 10% were from NGOs and 20% were unknown (maybe bloggers just like me?). This is just my wide guess, I am sure that someone could give me a better answer.

In terms of nationality, 70% were HongKongers and 30% were Foreigner. However there must be Singaporean because I heard the accent. Language used during the presentations were English while I heard that offline discussions were mostly in Cantonese.

In keeping with the global Barcamp tradition, Saturday's meeting was run as an "unconference": No pre-organized panels or keynotes or invited lectures. First thing in the morning, participants are greeted by a whiteboard indicating timeslots and rooms. Anybody who wants to lead a discussion or give an impromptu presentation writes their subject on a post-it note and sticks it on the board. Similar topics are combined and consolidated, then away we go. With the mix of people we had, the result was a really nice mix of technical sessions, sessions about business, and more philosophical discussions.

I learned a lot from many people about the web startup scene in Hong Kong, the mobile web, online communities, search engine optimization, and many other things. But like most conferences the most important part was getting to know a great group of people, sitting around talking in the halls and sharing all kinds of ideas.

Since the meeting was hosted by Yahoo! Hong Kong, I felt compelled to lead a discussion on "user rights," the lessons all of us should learn from the Shi Tao case, and how should the web community constructively proceed if we care about protecting users' rights to privacy and free expression? (For the record the local Yahoo! folk were good sports about it.) It was exciting to see how many people came to the session and showed that they care about building responsible web businesses. There was an especially thought provoking discussion about where to host user data. One person said you should just host all user data in the U.S. so that governments like the Chinese government can't get at it. Others questioned whether this is a cop out for local businesses especially: shouldn't local companies push to maintain and defend spaces where the rights of users can be protected in their home jurisdictions? Don't they owe that to their users? There was also the question of whether users from here or anywhere else can really count on the U.S. government in the long run anyway - or any government for that matter if nobody is pushing back. Several people who work in web startups said they would really like to see common guidelines developed for the industry about how to deal with governments that pressure them to control user speech or make unreasonable user data demands. We also raised the need to do a better job at informing the public about how e-mail and user content-sharing services work, and with whom their data is shared. Several people said they hope to see more discussions like this in the Hong Kong web community. In response to that interest, I set up a follow-on wiki page here where you can find out more and sign up on a "Hong Kong user rights" google group. 

Interested in getting involved with Hong Kong's next Barcamp, or in learning more about what happened on Saturday? Check out the BarCamp HongKong wiki page and Facebook Group.

Also, for anybody who may be interested, I'll be presenting a paper titled "Yahoo!, Shi Tao, and the Lessons for Corporate Social Responsibility" on Tuesday at the International Conference on Technology and Social Responsibility being held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I will put the paper online when it's ready for public viewing.

 

(photo by Daisy Fung)

Prelim reports: Pro-China parties make strong showing

As of 3:30am Hong Kong time, preliminary results in the Chinese media show the pro-China parties with a strong lead. The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) is now anticipating a total of 114 seats, up from 62. That's rather big.

This special page  (in Chinese) on the Ming Pao website continues to be updated with all the latest.

Roland Soong has a translation  from the Chinese-language Those Were the Days blog reacting to the Tsang Yok-sing editorial  bashing the pro-democratic camp for hypocrisy.  The post concludes:  

If Tsang was genuinely not concerned about "heating up the election" and believed that the DAB candidates were superior to the pan-democrats, there ought to be debates at public forums instead of evasions that result in insufficient information.  No matter how mature the voters are, how do they make rational voters?  Sophistry is about criticizing the opponent while concealing one's weakness.

Yet, if the pan-democrats are overwhelmingly defeated in the district council elections, I would still feel that it was the fault of the pan-democrats.  Regardless of the strategies and tactics of their opponents, they ought to have no fear no matter political conspiracies are worked up by their opponents?  But if Jasper Tsang Yuk-sing said he trust the democratic choice of the people of Hong Kong, then why doesn't the DAB believe that the people of Hong Kong should be able to choose their own Chief Executive in 2002?  Could they believe in the people when it is advantageous to them, but not when it is not to their advantage?

No matter what the outcome is today, no matter whether the pan-democrats win or lose, it is the choice made by the people of Hong Kong.  That should be respected and accepted.  Wins or losses are less important than learning the lessons and improving oneself, while avoiding the unnecessary arguments.

It will be interesting to hear what the pundits have to say in the morning. 

(Longer version of this post cross-posted on the HKStories blog.)

HK District Council Elections: Will pro-China parties gain seats as predicted?

The international and local media are all reporting that Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp will likely lose seats in today's district council election.

Will that indeed happen? My students are on the case today and tonight. Watch our Hong Kong Stories website for the latest developments plus in-depth analysis and feature stories about how the district councils work, voter concerns, campaign tactics and hot races. Not sure what the district councils do and what the elections are about? See our FAQ. I have also started a blog page to monitor what other media and blogs are staying.  Balloting started at 7:30am this morning and ends at 10:30. We're expecting preliminary results around 2am.

Naturally there is a lot more blow-by-blow coverage on Chinese-language news sites such as the Ming Pao and the Oriental Daily than in the Standard (free) and SCMP (paid subscription only, boo hiss!).

Today he posted the translation of a very interesting blog post by Jasper Tsang Yok-sing titled: Democracy In Need of Emergency Help. Tsang slams the democratic camp for their failure to gain greater popular support, accusing them of false democracy:

In 2003, the DAB was defeated badly but they never  criticized the citizens.  In 2000, the Democratic Party lost many votes  in the Legislative Council and publicly blamed the voters.  So who are  the real "democrats" here?

"Democracy needs emergency help"?  This is a risible slogan.  In an open, fair and just election, it is a victory for democracy no matter who wins.  It is a basic concept in the believe of the people and democracy.  The people who need emergency cannot be democrats, for they can only be those people who wave the flag of "democracy" but are unwilling to do the practical work to gain the support of the voters.

Check out the full translation in English  as well as Tsang's original in Chinese. 

I am reminded of the U.S. presidential elections in 2004, when many Republicans were accusing John Kerry and the Democrats of being "limousine liberals," out of touch with the American heartland. It appears that Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp has managed to open itself up to the same accusation, with the pro-China camp having arguably done a better job at forging relationships with ordinary low-income people around Hong Kong.

Quite a number of my students' stories have quoted pro-democratic candidates complaining that the pro-China camp has better resources to reach out to the grassroots, while pro-China candidates have questioned who is more "democratic" than whom...

Hong Kong District Council Elections: Check out our student coverage!

(Photo by Andy Ho)

  My students are posting stories in the run-up to Hong Kong's District Council Elections on Sunday. They'll be covering events on election day and day after as well. Check it out at Hong Kong Stories.

Please give them your feedback in the comments section if you'd like.

Oiwan Lam's indecency case: demanding more transparency

The good folks at the Hong Kong-based web company Outblaze have posted a hilarious cartoon (above - click through to their website for a larger version) accompanied by a cleverly written blog post about Oiwan Lam's indecency case. Remember the case of the blogger who is facing a possible jail sentence and/or a crippling fine because she posted a photo containing exposed female nipples in a commentary on InMediaHK, a non-profit citizen-media website, in the context of a political discussion about Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal and indecency laws? The Outblaze editorial team concludes:

While the world laughs at Hong Kong, let us make an appeal for a bit more common sense to be deployed in this fair city. Let us stop being automatically terrified of nipples or other parts of the human body, particularly in artistic context. Let us treat the Internet as a new medium and realize that we cannot shoe-horn outdated laws to apply to new media, because they will fit extremely poorly in the new digital framework. Let us proclaim to the prudes: “if you don’t like, don’t look”. And, above all, let us reform and modernize TELA and OAT before we are forced to endure further silliness. Organs that are supposed to safeguard the public good – not oppress it – should be informed, open, and transparent, and neither TELA nor OAT appears to be anything of the sort.

Read the whole thing. It's a great read.

In my last post updating Oiwan's case last month, I reported how Oiwan was having trouble getting the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) and the Obscene Articles Tribunal (OAT) to answer her questions - answers which she believes are important so that she can adequately prepare her defense.  In her new blog, she posted the full text of her reply to OAT, which requested that she "Please tell the Tribunal the relevance of the questions in relation to the full hearing."  Her letter begins:

In response to your letter dated July 24 2007 concerning the relevance of my questions in relation to the full hearing, I would like to refer to the mission statement of Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) that they follow the principle of “Transparency to the public”. I believe that the information that I asked for should be open to the public inquiries not to mention the fact that I am the applicant in this classification proceedings.

As I said in my previous letter, the information that I asked for “is necessary for my preparation of witness statement, expert opinions, submissions, etc. as they directly affect the classification of the article – which can lead to a serious criminal charge.”

However, to entertain TELA and OAT’s question, I would like to refer to CAP 390, section 7(2), which states: “Subject to subsection (3), in the event of any difference between the members of a Tribunal, the decision of that Tribunal shall be that of the majority of them or, in the event that they are equally divided, that of the presiding magistrate.”

Questions 1-4 from my letter dated July 17 are to seek further information on the above process described by the law. If such process had not taken place, I would seek judicial review for the interim classification.

Click here to read the rest. Then on August 19th Oiwan received a reply from OAT. Here is her full post:

Got the latest update from the Obscene Article Tribunal. It is really amazing to read their letters.

Upon receiving my letters for further info, OAT is now writing to Television and Entertainment Authoring to seek inquiries about “point of law” regarding its duty. Here is the OAT letter to TELA cc to me:

"Dear Sir,

Case No. OAGO000147/2007

We refer to the letter from the applicant dated 9.8.2007.

Question 3 and 4 in the letter probably involve point of law.

The tribunal would like to have your response to inter alia
(1) whether the Tribunal has a duty to disclose the process of interim classification, which according to s.14(1)(a) of Cap. 390 is held in private without the attendance of anyone and
(2) if there is such a duty, the degree of disclosure; within 6 weeks from today."

Is it usual that a judicial body would seek advice from an administrative body on its duty? Anyone with a legal mind can throw some light?

Any ideas, anyone?

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: