Holding online intermediaries of discussion forums as secondary publishers with liabilities imposed from outset, who also have the duties to monitor and take active actions when noticed of defamatory activities on their platform. Defendants were administrators, providers and managers of a website that hosted one of most popular Internet discussion forums in Hong Kong, known as the Golden Forum. Plaintiffs were publishers of the Oriental Press Groups, one of the most popular local newspapers. Three entries were posted in the defendants’ forum accusing plaintiffs dealing with money laundering, drug trafficking and bribery, etc. Defendants removed two entries with due notice but the last one was removed eight months after being informed. Lower court held the forum for not having duly removed this entry without reasonable...
(1) Establishing a statutory ‘safe harbour’ for OSPs so that their liabilities for copyright infringement occurring on their service platforms could be limited, provided that OSPs meet certain prescribed conditions, including the taking of reasonable steps to limit or stop copyright infringement when being notified. (2) The proposal aims at facilitating OSPs’ handling of alleged infringement balancing the interests between copyright owners and users. Under the proposed ‘safe harbour’ provisions, OSPs’ liabilities for copyright infringement occurring on their service platforms could be limited provided that they meet certain prescribed conditions, including the taking of reasonable steps to limit or stop copyright infringement when being notified. (3) The ‘safe harbour’ will be underpinned by a Code of Practice which...
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...