The important thing distinction between this motion and former makes an attempt to take away content material is that it is a civil injunction, not a felony prosecution—which means it’s, at the least legally talking, nearer to a copyright takedown request. A platform might arguably be much less more likely to take a reputational hit if it removes the content material upon request.
Kwong believes it will certainly make platforms extra more likely to cooperate, and there have already been fairly clear indicators to that impact. In a single listening to in December, the federal government was requested by the courtroom to seek the advice of on-line platforms as to the feasibility of the injunction. The ultimate judgment this week says that whereas the platforms “haven’t taken half in these proceedings, they’ve indicated that they’re able to accede to the Authorities’s request if there’s a courtroom order.”
“The precise targets on this case, primarily the tech giants, might have much less hesitation to adjust to a civil courtroom order than a nationwide safety order as a result of if it’s the latter, they could additionally face backfire from the US,” says Eric Yan-Ho Lai, a analysis fellow at Georgetown Heart for Asian Regulation.
Lai additionally says now that the injunction is granted, will probably be simpler to prosecute a person primarily based on violation of a civil injunction moderately than prosecuting somebody for felony offenses, because the authorities received’t have to show felony intent.
The chilling impact
Instantly after the injunction, human rights advocates known as on tech corporations to stay dedicated to their values. “Corporations like Google and Apple have repeatedly claimed that they stand by the common proper to freedom of expression. They need to put their beliefs into observe,” says Freedom Home’s Wang. “Google and different tech corporations ought to completely doc authorities calls for, and publish detailed transparency stories on content material takedowns, each for these initiated by the authorities and people achieved by the businesses themselves.”
With out making their plans clear, it’s too early to know simply how tech corporations will react. However proper after the injunction was granted, the track largely remained accessible for Hong Kong customers on most platforms, together with YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify, in response to the South China Morning Publish. On iTunes, the track even returned to the highest of the obtain rankings a couple of hours after the injunction.
One key issue which will nonetheless decide company cooperation is how far the content material removing requests go. There’ll certainly be extra movies of the track which can be uploaded to YouTube, to not point out unbiased web sites internet hosting the movies and music for extra folks to entry. Will the federal government go after every of them too?
The Hong Kong authorities has beforehand stated in courtroom hearings that it seeks solely native restriction of the net content material, which means content material shall be inaccessible solely to customers bodily within the metropolis. Massive platforms like YouTube can do this with out issue.
