Internet Life

Beware: A Blogger Might Spend 12 Months in Prison!

New case reported in Hong Kong

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

12th of July 2007, 07:42 GMT

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An interesting case was reported in Hong Kong where Olwan Lam, a blogger who wrote about pornography, might a face a sentence of 12 months in prison. In addition, he may have to pay for approximately HK$400.000. Why, you'll ask. Well, it all started when the blogger, being disappointed by the country's authorities who arrested a man for publishing links to pornography, decided to wrote

on his own page about nudity and comment on the police's actions. However, the element that attracted the authorities' attention was the photograph attached to the essay that seems to be taken from Flickr, the popular photo sharing service.

"Then I chose this particular photograph, I deliberately went to flickr, because flickr is an extremely popular web service. I used the single search term 'nude' to find this particular photograph," the blogger said according to Interlocals.net.

After approximately one week of availability, the photo was noticed by the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority that demanded Olwan Lam to remove the photo from the page. "They gave me an advice and asked me to remove the photograph because it may be indecent. At the time, my thought was that the Obscene Articles Tribunal had not yet made a judgment and the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority was just an administrative department. I asked that worker why TELA took action immediately after receiving one and only one complaint," he mentioned as the same source reported.

Questioned if he is afraid that the authorities might send him to prison, the blogger offered a calm response: "Actually, I am not worried. I am psychologically prepared to spend time to deal with this matter and to raise money. If the review is still unfavorable, I will appeal."

However, the blogger calls the citizens for help because he knows that fighting against the Hong Kong authorities is almost an impossible mission. "The citizens should care about this case. More generally, they should care about the Hong Kong system for determining indecency/obscenity. As a cosmopolitan city, we need to have easy circulation and diversity in our information and culture. The citizens should also actively try to reform the system of censorship of obscene/indecent materials," he also added according to Interlocals.net.

TAGS:

blogger | prison | hong kong

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