Culture Club | As Hong Kong lawmakers plan copyright bill, can young people teach old seafood new tricks?
Lawmakers and youth must reach an agreement on copyright law
Hong Kong is best known for its outside-the-box Cantonese slang. And the one that grabs my attention the most lately is “old seafood”.
“Old seafood” obviously isn’t referring to seafood that is old, aged or stale. It doesn’t even have anything to do with seafood to begin with. The pronunciation of “old seafood” in English in fact resembles the Cantonese sound of lo see fut, which actually refers to the body part that is much more localised than buttock but I can’t write that word here. Essentially it refers to an ignorant, arrogant older person who occupies top positions but thinks they know it all.
The heated debate over the latest copyright bill amendment dubbed “Internet Article 23” — a name derived from the Basic Law’s Article 23 on national security that failed to pass in 2003 — which will resume its second reading at Legco next Wednesday, is to best illustrate why Hong Kong’s young people are so angry with the city’s old seafood.
The debate centres around whether the 2014 copyright bill is the Leung Chun-ying government’s measure to clampdown on freedom of speech and creations in the name of protecting copyright owners and fostering the growth of cultural and creative industries.
The bill has stirred public outcry, especially among youngsters who are habitual Internet users and love to express themselves by creating derivative works based on copyrighted pieces such as pictures, films and songs.
I’m not planning to go into details, but the ceaseless debates have exposed vast cultural and generational gaps between young people who thrive on the Internet and their senior counterparts who are running our society.
Over the past week, it was discovered that the “honourable” lawmakers who are supposed to debate and vote on citizens’ behalf at Legco on the copyright bill — which includes amendments to tackle online piracy — actually know very little about not just the details of the bill but also the behaviour of young people online.