Movie and song copiers beware: Use an Internet discussion site in Hong Kong to violate copyrights and you may be turned in to law enforcement authorities by an 11-year-old Boy Scout.
Starting this summer the Hong Kong government plans to have 200,000 youths search discussion sites for illegal copies of copyrighted songs and movies and report them to the authorities. The campaign has delighted the entertainment industry but prompted misgivings among some civil liberties advocates.
The so-called Youth Ambassadors campaign will start today with 1,600 youths pledging their participation at a stadium in front of leading Hong Kong film and singing stars and several government ministers.
The Youth Ambassadors represent a new reliance on minors to keep order on the Internet. All members of the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and nine other uniformed youth groups here, ranging in age from 9 to 25, will be expected to participate, government officials said.
Tam Yiu-keung, the Hong Kong Excise and Customs Department's senior superintendent for intellectual property investigations, said the program should not raise concerns about privacy or the role of children in law enforcement. The youths will visit Internet discussion sites that are open to all, he said, so the program is no different than asking young people to tell the police if they see a crime on the street.
"We are not trying to manipulate youths and get them into the spy profession," Tam said. "What we are just trying to do is arouse a civic conscience to report crimes to the authorities."
But the program is making some nervous. Emily Lau (
Christine Loh, the chief executive of Civic Exchange, a policy research group, said the program would have to be managed with particular care because of its echoes of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China, when children were encouraged to inform on their parents and other relatives.
Youths who participated in a pilot program this spring found another problem: Some of their friends thought it was uncool.
"They joke with me and ask, `Oooh, will you arrest me?'" said Hung Ming-wai, 16.
In the hope of making the program cool, the government has arranged for today's ceremony to include film director and actor Stephen Fung (馮德倫), as well as four popular singers: Gigi Leung (梁詠琪), Niki Chow (周麗淇), Wilfred Lau (劉浩龍) and Alex Fong (方中信).
When youths report to the authorities that movies, songs or other copyrighted material is being made available through an Internet posting, customs officials will verify the posting and then relay it to trade groups like the Motion Picture Association or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The associations then send warning letters to the Web masters of the discussion forums asking them to delete the offending posting; the customs officials keep secret which child has spotted which posting.
Educating youths to respect copyrights is a central goal of the program, officials said.
"Let's face it: A lot of Internet piracy is done by young people," said Hong Kong's Secretary of Commerce, Industry and Technology Joseph Wong (王永平).
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