It may not be illegal now, but one day, internet pirates will be punished, says customs official
Hong Kong people who download copyrighted movies, music and software from cyberspace even for personal use have been put on notice - you may be exempt from prosecution now, but not forever.
A lawmaker said the warning from customs Senior Superintendent Tam Yiu-keung potentially affected hundreds of thousands of people because of Hong Kong's high rate of internet usage.
An internal government study involving four departments concluded last year that people who use the popular BitTorrent (BT) technology to upload an original copy - or 'seed' - of a copyrighted work to the internet are liable for criminal prosecution under Hong Kong law.
Its findings were not made public, but they formed the basis for a world first - the arrest in Hong Kong of a 38-year-old unemployed man for uploading seeds of three movies onto the internet using the technology that allows people across the internet to share files.
The study did not go into the implications for people who download from such seeds but Mr Tam, of customs' intellectual property investigation bureau, warned: 'It does not mean that downloading is for sure not a criminal offence.'
He said there were no immediate plans for further studies on the copyright ordinance, and officials would continue to focus on targeting Hong Kong people who posted originator BT seeds.