Boy Scouts Doing China's Dirty Work

Starting this summer, the Hong Kong government intends to have approximately 200,000 young people scouring the Internet discussion sites linking to or containing illegal copies of copyrighted movies and music and then report the findings to law enforcement. While the entertainment industry is doing cartwheels at this news, civil liberties advocates are crying foul.

The 'Youth Ambassadors' campaign will begin on Wednesday with approximately 1,600 young people pledging to participate at a stadium with movie and music stars as well as government ministers.

Hong Kong is relying on youths to keep order on the Internet by enlisting the help of all of the members of the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides as well as nine other groups with ages ranging from 9 to 25.

Tam Yiu-keung, Hong Kong's Excise and Customs Department's senior superintendent of customs for intellectual property investigations states the program should not cause any worries about privacy or using children in law enforcement because the government program is searching public discussion sites that would be no different from reporting a crime while walking down the street.

Despite local news reports, Tam added “We are not trying to manipulate youths and get them into the spy profession. What we are just trying to do is arouse a civic conscience to report crimes to authorities.”

While mainland China has periodic crackdowns on bootleg movies because of the pressure coming from Western countries, Hong Kong maintains a good reputation for banning fake and bootlegged products ranging from clothing to movies and music. Despite this claim from Tam, the program is making people like Emily Lau, a pro-democracy lawmaker nervous because she believes that more details should be released and open to public debate before going ahead with such a program.

“Public education I support, but to get young kids to do the reporting?” she said. “I feel uneasy about it.”

A policy research group called Civic Exchange states that the program would have to be handled carefully because of its faint echoes of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China where youths were encouraged to spy on and report crimes of their parents.

Many teens view the action as uncool. The government is responding by having a ceremony that will include Stephen Fung, a movie director and actor as well as popular singers Gigi Leung, Niki Chow, Wilfred Lau and Alex Fong.

Authorities are taking the tips from youngsters and verifying them before relaying the information to trade groups like the Motion Picture Association or the International Federation of Phonographic Industry. These groups will then send warning letters to the web masters of the message boards requesting them to delete the offending posts while keeping the identity of the youths secret.

The pilot program for this movement took place in the spring with 700 young people who found 800 cases of copyrighted material that were being traded using the popular P2P technology BitTorrent. Authorities would then identify the sources, most of which were located in Australia, Eruope, and the United States, which are beyond the easy reach of Hong Kong.

Tam states that more than three-fifths of the illegal posts have been deleted without signs of replacement.

According to Tam, they are not going after downloaders at this point because there is no major movement to do so among the general public on how to handle the cases.

Hong Kong has criminal penalties for those making copies of copyrighted materials without permission and civil penalties to those who accept the copies, but with the use of BitTorrent, the distinction between the two is no longer clear because down loaders often unintentionally upload segments of the file to other BitTorrent users. Although at this point, enforcement is focused primarily on the seeders of such files.

This program is drawing international interest. Customs officials in Hong Kong have already contacted their counterparts in the United States, Macao and mainland China, they are ready to help others set up similar programs according to Tam.

Dean Boyd, a Homeland Security Department spokesperson in Washington stated that the U.S. Has no plans to introduce such a program because of liability concerns.

In addition, Deron Smith, a spokesperson for the Boy Scouts of America, stated that the group has no plans to ask scouts to report infringements to law enforcement.

The Scout Association of Hong Kong has seized this opportunity as a way to teach good citizenship. Boy Scouts ages 11-20 are expected to use the system which reports infringements to a website. The goal of the program is to teach youths to respect copyrighted material.

This program is more likely to work better in Hong Kong because their teenagers are obedient, mainly because of Confucian tradition and social pressures to study and serve the community.

The effectiveness of the program will depend on the efficiency of the participants.

While I am personally opposed to this program, I do respect their goal.

What are your thoughts on the program?