The Court of Appeal has dismissed a magazine's application to take its case to the city's highest court after it was censured for publishing semi-nude photographs of an apparently kidnapped actress.
The court did not ask to hear from lawyers for the city's decency watchdog before rejecting the application for Three Weekly to seek a ruling from the Court of Final Appeal over the classification as obscene of an article in its November 2, 2003, edition.
The Court of Appeal ruled on May 31 that the Obscene Articles Tribunal acted properly in classifying the photographs as obscene and upheld a previous ruling against the now-defunct Chinese-language magazine.
Po Wing-kay, counsel for the magazine, challenged the court's ruling on three fronts: that it was wrong to suggest the invasion of someone's privacy should be a factor considered by the tribunal; that the tribunal should have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that something was obscene; and that clarification was needed as to when an error by the tribunal could nullify its findings.
'It is our submission that invasion of privacy is never a relevant fact,' Ms Po said. 'If someone asks the tribunal to look at these [sorts of facts], they are asking it to look into content ... and that is a slippery slope towards press censorship.'
She rejected the court's suggestion that whether privacy was a factor was entirely an issue of context.