-
"Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi may be on the board of MySpace China, but the way the new venture's CEO tells it, the famously interventionist News Corp mogul will play next to no role in how it is run."
-
"Baidu.com Inc., China's Internet search leader, said first-quarter net profit more than doubled on strong traffic growth and higher advertising revenues."
-
"Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com will report earnings on Tuesday, smack in the middle of China's week-long Labor Day national holiday period, and investors are clearly expecting to see a boost from a very early start to the 2008 Olympics advertising seas
-
"Can anything stop Robin Li? A lot of people in China are probably asking themselves that question today..."
-
"Google has 21.7 percent of China's search market, well behind industry leader Baidu.com Inc., which has 55 percent.."
-
Armstrong on Obama: "I find his non-existent online outreach strategy very pre-2003, and you are free to defend it. Just don't mimic the latest about how Obama is the new Reagan, because the latter knew how to work with his base."
« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »
April 30, 2007
April 29, 2007
April 27, 2007
April 25, 2007
April 24, 2007
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.
April 23, 2007
April 21, 2007
April 20, 2007
The Yahoo! lawsuit: picking through Chinese and English legal documents
The lawsuit against Yahoo! being filed by the wife of jailed dissident Wang Xiaoning is being represented by Morton Sklar, Executive Director of a group called the World Organization for Human Rights USA. They have posted a full PDF file of their complaint against Yahoo! here. I have gone over it, and also gone over the Chinese language conviction of Wang, posted online in PDF form here and here.
Before we go into the details, a word about the people behind this case. I am not especially familiar with the World Organization for Human Rights USA but here is how they describe themselves:
The World Organization for Human Rights USA, founded in 1996 as the World Organization Against Torture USA, is a non-governmental human rights organization dedicated to the prevention of torture and other human rights abuses.
What sets us apart from the larger and more well-established human rights groups is that we are the only international human rights group in the U.S.:
* Dealing primarily if not exclusively with human rights compliance in the U.S.; and,
* Using litigation in U.S. courts as a primary means for bringing attention to compliance problems and for obtaining relief.
They have recently issued a report titled "Torture by the United States" in which they argue that the U.S. Government "does not properly recognize its own responsibility for the pattern and practice of torture that has been taking place in the treatment of alleged terrorist detainees," etc. I have not read their report in full but I tend to agree with that statement.
I cite this at length as evidence that this case is not a "China-bashing" exercise to make China or Chinese people look bad in contrast with the virtuous Americans. The Bush Administration has been very un-virtuous of late in my opinion. I feel the need to make this completely clear just in case anybody mistakes the motivations of this lawsuit, or my own motivations in criticizing the behavior of Yahoo! and others, especially given these kinds of comments - which I receive fairly regularly.
Back to the matter at hand. The lawsuit filed against Yahoo!, which you can download in full here, includes the following:
28. Defendants greatly benefited from these violations of the Plaintiffs’ fundamental
human rights through their continued and expanded conduct of business in the PRC, the second- largest Internet market in the world with at least 110 million users. Defendants provided identifying information about the Plaintiffs, in violation of the privacy agreements and assurances made to the Defendants’ customers and users, that led to their arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention and torture, in order to obtain the approval and support of PRC officials and their agreement to allow them to continue conducting and expanding the Defendants’ business interests in the PRC.
...and:
39. The court specifically relied on evidence supplied by Defendants to identify and convict Wang Xiaoning. The judgment noted that Yahoo! HK informed investigators that a mainland China-based e-mail account ([email protected]) was used to set up Wang Xiaoning’s “aaabbbccc” Yahoo! Group, and that the e-mail address [email protected], which Wang Xiaoning used to post e-mails to that Yahoo! Group, was also a mainland China-based account maintained by Wang Xiaoning. Defendants were cited in the court decision as instrumental in causing the Plaintiff’s arrest and criminal prosecution.
Based on what I have read and re-read in the sentence handed down in 2003 by the Beijing Number One Intermediate People's court, there are a lot of unanswered questions. I am supposing that the plaintiffs have more evidence that will supply some answers, and which will come out in court if this suit does go to court, given that Wang's wife Yu Lin claims that "If Yahoo did not give out this information, then the Chinese government would not be able to sentence him.'' The lawsuit also claims that Yahoo! supplied the information voluntarily and not under subpoena.
So what does the Chinese court document say and what doesn't it say about Yahoo!'s involvement? To save those of you who read Chinese the effort of downloading and wading through the PDF file, here is a screen cap of the section of the court judgment which discusses Yahoo! and his Yahoo! accounts (click to enlarge to readable size):
Point one, on the previous page, describes how Wang set up a Yahoo! Group using a couple of Yahoo! China e-mail addresses, but that eventually Yahoo! China administrators noticed the politically sensitive content of his postings and stopped him from making further postings to the group.
Point two describes the results of a search of Wang's home conducted by personnel from the Beijing City State Security Bureau, during which time they searched and confiscated his computer, identifying specific document files that Wang had been sending.
Point three describes confirmation of a further offending document on Wang's computer.
Point four says that the Beijing City State Security Bureau confirms that various of these documents were sent by Wang from the Yahoo! China e-mail account [email protected]. They do not specify whether they determined the connection between Wang and this e-mail account from searching Wang's computer or confirmation obtained from Yahoo!, or both.
Point five concerns specific actions by Yahoo!. It says that Yahoo! China is a website operated domestically in China by Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong). It then goes on to say that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) provided confirmation that the Yahoo! Group called "aaabbbccc" run by Wang was set up using the Yahoo China e-mail address [email protected]. No further information is given in the judgment document about whether Yahoo! provided personally identifying information about Wang to the State Security personnel. Nor is there any information about the circumstances under which these State Security personnel obtained information from Yahoo!, from which employees they obtained it, and the extent to which the exchange of information was voluntary.
The red herring about whether the information was handed over by Yahoo! employees based in Hong Kong or China still persists, despite the fact that it seems pretty clear that whatever information was handed over went from Yahoo! employees inside China, as it did in the case of Shi Tao. However at that time, Yahoo! China's operating license was under the name of Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong). As it so happens, I have a screenshot from Yahoo! China taken in 2004, when I first did some tests for censorship of politically sensitive words. As you will see there at the bottom of the page, it says: "Copyright 2004 Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd." This is from cn.search.yahoo.com, one of Yahoo! China's web services hosted inside mainland China. (Click the image below to enlarge.)
Thus the mention of Yahoo! (Hong Kong) Holdings in the Chinese court document. Nevertheless, there is still confusion. The New York Times quotes Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan as saying: “Yahoo HK does not exchange info with Yahoo China or give information to mainland Chinese security forces.” That may be technically true at the moment but without further clarification that statement only serves to confuse the facts of the case further... and send journalists without detailed knowledge of these cases down a blind alley.
Recent Posts
- Now blogging on my book blog at Consentofthenetworked.com
- Netizen Report: Fight for the Future Edition
- An open thank you letter to Global Voices, on International Volunteer Day
- The Great Firewall of America
- Surveillance and Censorship in India
- Surveillance technologies and "apolitical" corporations
- Kudos and Concerns for Google
- Tunisia and the Internet: A chance to get things right?
- Global netizens respond to Steve Jobs' death
- The Netizen Report on Global Voices Advocacy
Categories
- Africa
- Asia
- Asian tech
- Blog Day 2005
- BlogDay2006
- Bloggercon
- Bloggercorps
- Blognashville
- Books
- BrainstormTech
- Censorship
- China
- CIRC
- Citizen Media
- CNBloggercon
- Copyright
- Corporate Responsibility
- Corporate Thuggery
- Creative Commons
- Current Affairs
- Cyber-activism
- Cyber-spooks
- Cybertarianism
- Daily Links
- Dalian
- Davos
- Democracy
- Diplomacy
- Easongate
- Education
- Events
- Film
- FON
- Fortune Brainstorm
- Free Burma
- Free Culture
- Freedom of Speech
- Freehaowu
- Future of journalism
- Future of media
- Global bloggers
- Global Voices
- GVsummit2008
- Hong Kong
- Human Rights
- Hurricane Katrina
- I&S conference
- Internet Governance
- Iran
- Iraq
- iSummit
- Japan
- JMSC
- Journalism
- Katrina05
- Law
- Les Blogs
- Media mentions
- Microsoft
- Natural disasters
- Netizenship
- Non-profits
- North Korea
- Not Serious
- Oiwan
- OPML
- Personal
- Podcasting
- Politics
- Pop!Tech
- Propaganda
- Scandal-of-the-day
- Second Life
- Social Networking
- State-sponsored Thuggery
- Taiwan
- Television
- Travel
- Tunisia
- U.S. Policy
- Videoblogging
- Vietnam
- We Media
- Web/Tech
- Web2.0
- Webcred
- Weblogs
- WEF
- Weird
- Wikipedia
- WJEC
- WSIS
- Yahoo