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HK operators say they are powerless to stop viewers gaining access to broadcasts of major sports and movies

Cable television operators  are standing by helplessly while Hongkongers watch major sporting events free by logging on to mainland websites.

Since the sites are hosted outside Hong Kong, authorities say all they can do is inform their mainland counterparts of copyright and broadcast infringements and hope they will take action.

One popular site lists a schedule of programmes from several mainland television channels and offers viewers choices of popular Korean and Japanese drama series, as well as free access to US basketball, plus top British and European soccer  - most of which are shown on free terrestrial TV on the mainland.

The site, which can be  found with a simple search engine entry, also offers a menu of fresh-release movies, such as Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated Brokeback Mountain.

A spokesman for Cable TV, which in 2004 won rights to broadcast Premier League soccer, admitted the station could not take action against mainland sites.

'We have been monitoring these kinds of sites, but it looks like most of them are operating outside of Hong Kong, in the mainland, and so are outside Hong Kong's jurisdiction,' the spokesman said. 'The only thing we can do whenever we see this kind of thing is make a report to the Hong Kong authorities and see what they can do.'

However, Akash Sachdeva, a Hong Kong-based intellectual property lawyer at Allen & Overy, said that since the sites  can be viewed here, it falls within Hong Kong jurisdiction. He  predicted that once websites showing material usually available exclusively on television channels start to have an impact on TV stations' profits, they would start to take action.

Mainland authorities are setting up teams to deal with internet piracy. Last year laws were passed to help protect intellectual property on the internet and to force internet  providers who are aware that their customers are infringing copyright laws to close accounts.

The deputy superintendent in charge of administration and support at the Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau of the Customs and Excise Bureau, Sam Lui Kin-hung,  said: 'If the offence happened in Hong Kong, then Hong Kong Customs and Excise has the power to investigate the offence. If the website is hosted in mainland China, our power to investigate does not extend there.

'If we receive information about the hosting of the information relating to copyright infringement on an internet site hosted in the mainland, we will refer it internally to the mainland authorities for follow-up action.'

However, he admitted that despite contacting mainland authorities about internet sites suspected of infringing copyright and intellectual property laws, this had not led to a single case of a site being closed down based on information provided from Hong Kong.



Free mainland websites hit cable TV