Hong Hong: Oiwan Lam, Obscene Articles Tribunal, TELA and Cupid and Psyche

Hong Kong's official
search for
unseemly
images
continues apace:

Cupid and Psyche
by François Gérard, 1798
in the Louvre, Paris.

Yesterday, Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) officers patrolling the Hong Kong Book Fair issued an "advice" that a book -- Love Mythology -- be withdrawn. Why? The book's cover (above) made the TELA officers uncomfortable.

Soon after Chinese-language newspaper reporters got hold of the story, however, TELA withdrew its advice

Meanwhile, after a complaint to TELA which was then passed on to Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal, Oiwan Lam is being legally pursued for publishing a photo on her website.

Now, Oiwan Lam has a self-introduction and case briefing: interlocals

Not sure about the clarion call Free Oiwan Lam! As of this writing, Lam is free. That said, it is not a pleasant experience having a legal cloud of unknowing cast a major shadow over one's life.

Other than that, Mister Bijou is also reminded of one graffiti of the Free (fill in the blank)! variety which used to grace the wall of building in Crouch End, London, in the 1970s where one wag had added: with every packet of cornflakes!

Isn't it odd what one remembers?

Anyway, check out Oiwan in: interlocals

Hong Kong: Oiwan Lam update

Rebecca MacKinnon (see biography) provides a useful roundup of the latest and ongoing manoeuvre at internet censorship in Hong Kong: Oiwan update: BBC interview, HK Govt double-standards & Flickr petition

Well worth a read and some links that are mighty profitable to follow. Including this one to Hong Kong's Family Planning Association. Be warned, it's totally surreal (Flash required, no pun intended): famplan

As concerns the Yahoo!-owned photo website Flickr, the situation is a tad confusing . . .

According to Flickr, people uploading photos to the site can (if they wish) moderate who can view content using the following three filters:

Safe - Content suitable for a global, public audience
Moderate - If you're not sure whether your content is suitable for a global, public audience but you think that it doesn't need to be restricted per se, this category is for you
Restricted - This is content you probably wouldn't show to your mum, and definitely shouldn't be seen by kids

Fair enough.

However,

If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.

Only able to view "safe content"? Local terms of service? WTF?

Bah-humbug! By way of scientific enquiry, Mister Bijou did a Flickr search with "nude" as tag. Evidently, a lot of people do not set any filter on their own content: et voilà!

[Oh, by the way, linking to those photos may be illegal, based on a recent court case in Hong Kong]

Whatever. Even so, it is troubling that Flickr has decided that content on their website which their users deemed moderate or restricted is definitely off-limits hereabouts, even if you sign in: moderate/restricted

On 11 May 2007, Oiwan Lam posted an essay on one of Hong Kong's predominantly Chinese-language, community-oriented forums: InMediaHK.

Lam's essay about the state of censorship in Hong Kong included a photograph (left).

The photo was hot-linked from one of the world's biggest user-generated websites for photos: Flickr.

A week after Lam posted her essay and the photograph, she received a phone call from someone at Hong Kong's Television and Entertainment Authority advising her that it had received "one and only one" complaint and the photo was problematic.

Lam chose to maintain the photo and essay, See here: InMediaHK

Meanwhile, until mid-June, that photo was freely accessible at Flickr. In mid-June, Flickr began limiting access to certain tagged photos for web surfers in four regions: Germany, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. Why those four? Who knows. Photo: joerrorr at flickr

Fast forward to end of June. Oiwan Lam has now been informed her essay has been classified on a preliminary basis as "Category II: Indecent" by the Hong Kong Obscene Articles Tribunal. The maximum penalty is HK$400,000 and 12 months in jail.

What"s going on? The Obscene Articles Tribunal is harassing citizens -- an interview with Oiwan Lam, by Ip Iam-chong. (1 July 2007: InMediaHK

English translation of Oiwan Lam interview, courtesy of Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth