A school plans to dismantle an innovative educational Intranet site it spent four years developing because of fears it infringes new copyright laws.
Pui Ching Middle School says it will pull nearly all the teaching material from the site, which contains content gathered since 1997 from textbooks, CD Roms, Web sites and other products protected by copyright.
The school's IT co-ordinator Cheng King-leung said at least six staff would spend the census break removing files from the site to avoid the school or teachers being sued.
The school first learned it was illegal to display borrowed content on its semi-public server when the Intellectual Property Department (IPD) and the Education Department briefed schools in February. The new laws take effect next month. According to the IPD, the amended laws target corporate copyright piracy.
'The ordinance exempts copying limited amounts of copyright works for educational purposes only,' Mr Cheng said. 'But it is still unclear whether it exempts making copy-and-pasted material available on the Intranet, which could allow uncontrolled redistribution by anyone who could access the half-open system, such as hackers.'
The information-technology pilot scheme involves 10 secondary and 10 primary schools, but Pui Ching has taken the scheme to the most advanced stage.
