Consultation on Draft Code of Practice for the reference of Online Service Providers (8 August 2011 to 9 September 2011)

When HK government introduced the 2011 Copyright (Amendment) Bill into the Legislative Council, it also brought into sight the statutory ‘safe harbour’ for OSPs so as to protect their potential liability for copyright infringement on their platforms with a non-statutory Code of Practice that sets out the procedures for copyright owners to serve notices of alleged infringement and for subscribers to serve counter notices, the draft was finalized in 2012:

(a) Instead of setting a specific time frame within which OSPs must take action to limit and stop a particular infringement, the revised draft Code requires OSPs to act as soon as practicable;

(b) In view of the privacy concerns raised by some respondents, HK has made changes under which a subscriber may choose to request the OSP not to disclose his personal data when sending a copy of the subscriber's counter notice to the complainant;

(c) OSPs will be required to keep records of the notices of alleged infringement and counter notices received for a period of 18 months. Such records are required for law enforcement purposes; and

(d) Both the complainants and subscribers will be required to provide more information to substantiate their infringement claims and counter claims respectively. This is to facilitate the resolution of disputes in a quicker and more cost-effective manner.