Comment Some misunderstandings on Hong Kong (Score 1) 229
As a citizen here I found myself responsible for clarifying some of the misunderstandings slashdotters have on Hong Kong:
- HK's judiciary system is definitely, entirely, totally different from that in China. It is inherited from the British colony before 1997, much more "civilized", transparent (= costly), and, in some sense, fair. This is what "one country, two systems" is for.
- I can say nearly 99% of bittorrent activities here were for copyrighted materials. My confession: I occasionally do that myself, although more often to get a copy of ubuntu. Yes, we have many (compared with western countries) pirate shops here, but 1) there are really not that many, and they are concentrated in some areas; 2) almost all of them are ran by the gangs; we all recognize that buying pirates from them is equivalent to funding them to do illegal activities. So bittorrent is quite popular recently here, kind of like helping each others.
- This is definitely not the first time prosecuting someone for violating the copyright law. I remember some guys here sharing mp3 via ftp and got caught. This time it goes into headline in HK newspaper and even in slashdot simply because the technology used here: bittorrent, which was believed (at least by many) to be difficult to get caught.
- After the caught of that guy, the number of seeders, who were scared, dropped by at least 90%. The "random" warning letters help too (no, I haven't received any, poor luck~). However, we all know that we can still find many of them in websites in China...
- Littering in HK is actually fined HK$1500. This is severe because of SARS outbreak.
- HK's judiciary system is definitely, entirely, totally different from that in China. It is inherited from the British colony before 1997, much more "civilized", transparent (= costly), and, in some sense, fair. This is what "one country, two systems" is for.
- I can say nearly 99% of bittorrent activities here were for copyrighted materials. My confession: I occasionally do that myself, although more often to get a copy of ubuntu. Yes, we have many (compared with western countries) pirate shops here, but 1) there are really not that many, and they are concentrated in some areas; 2) almost all of them are ran by the gangs; we all recognize that buying pirates from them is equivalent to funding them to do illegal activities. So bittorrent is quite popular recently here, kind of like helping each others.
- This is definitely not the first time prosecuting someone for violating the copyright law. I remember some guys here sharing mp3 via ftp and got caught. This time it goes into headline in HK newspaper and even in slashdot simply because the technology used here: bittorrent, which was believed (at least by many) to be difficult to get caught.
- After the caught of that guy, the number of seeders, who were scared, dropped by at least 90%. The "random" warning letters help too (no, I haven't received any, poor luck~). However, we all know that we can still find many of them in websites in China...
- Littering in HK is actually fined HK$1500. This is severe because of SARS outbreak.
