Article below: are you a criminal for hyperlinking somewhere obscene?
A Hong Kong man who posted a message with an internet link to an overseas pornographic website was fined yesterday for publishing an obscene article via the internet.
The prosecution and conviction, the city’s first under the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance, involved the use of a common computing technique, the police’s commercial crime bureau said.
The judgment has worried the local internet community, particularly with regard to possible constraints on the free flow of information.
Questions were also raised on whether guidelines are sufficient to halt online distribution of obscene material.
Woo Tai-wai, 48, pleaded guilty in Kwun Tong Court to publishing eight obscene photos via a local internet forum.
He provided a linked message which, when clicked, would enable other forum users to access an overseas pornographic website showing the photos.
A hyperlink is a graphic or text string which, when clicked, opens a new web page or jumps to a new location in the current page.
Deputy Magistrate Jason Wan Siu-ming fined Woo HK$5,000 in light of his guilty plea and clean record.
He also said that while the articles at issue were obscene, they were not extreme or of deviant taste.
The photos were classified as Class III obscene articles by the Obscene Articles Tribunal.
Internet Society chairman Charles Mok Nai-kwong said the court case, the first prosecution of its kind in the city, raised more questions than answers.
“It worries us as in this case the court has given a new direction to the public concerning the responsibility of internet users,” he said, as well as affecting the notion of freedom regarding the distribution of information on the internet.
“It may cause damage to the freedom of information on the internet. This man posted a link on the internet, which now becomes an act that constitutes the breaking of law, and my question is whether a link is being regarded as the `obscene article’.”
Mr Mok said he was also concerned that materials connected to links are changeable.
“Materials behind a link are always changeable. It could be pornographic material behind the link on the day of his arrest, but it could be something else on the day he posted the link,” he said. “Where should the authority draw the line?”
He said popular search engines such as Yahoo and Google carried links to porn sites. “In cases where search engines list out all the links to pornographic websites, is it justifiable to ask whether these would have to undergo censorship as they also provide these hyperlinks to obscene articles?
“We are not encouraging the distribution of this kind of material, but I suggest more guidelines from the government for internet users,” Mr Mok said.
The court heard in mitigation that Woo saw similar messages being posted at the forum and therefore did not know it was an offence.
Woo was remorseful, and he had just wanted to share the photoes “with other netizens”, the court was told.
The case came to light when the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority received a public complaint last November about obscene articles on the popular internet forum uwants.com.
The forum’s webmaster checked records and found the message was posted by “fireman 1324″ at the chat room “Adult Images Posting Area”.
The IP address belonged to the defendant.
Police raided a Sham Shui Po flat and arrested Woo, who confessed and said the message was posted via his home computer.
“I uploaded the pornographic [link] to uwants.com but I didn’t know it constituted an offence,” Woo told police on his arrest.
The court heard that Woo had made no financial gain from the publication of the link.
Add to del.icio.us
Digg this!
