Officials and pro-establishment politicians in Hong Kong claim they support the new copyright bill, but many things show us this may not be true.
Just two days before lawmakers are due to debate a controversial copyright bill already deferred from last week, a leader of the biggest pro-government party said he would ask his colleagues to support an amendment proposed by the "pan-democrats", the South China Morning Post reported.
Columnist Alex Lo, writing for the Post, called this pro-government party leader's "appeal for bipartisanship" a "rare display of leadership".
We all love bipartisanship, but most of us also have principles. Compromises can only be made reasonably and with integrity.
This pro-government party leader wants to persuade his party to back the dissidents' demand to change the new copyright bill's "fair dealing" clause to "fair use". There is nothing wrong with his suggestion per se. We can certainly debate this, but the reasons he is giving to support his proposal are appalling.
According to Sing Tao Daily, this pro-government party leader believes that "fair use" is better than "fair dealing" because the US uses the former and since "the US leads the world when it comes to protection of intellectual property", we should also follow this more "updated" approach.
In his view, there is only one true way to protect intellectual property (IP), just as there is only one true god. We can only discover the real essence of copyright protection under the guidance and leadership of the US. But many other nations do not share this faith in the US way of doing things. Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand all have used "fair dealing" as their standard reference, as have India, Singapore, South Africa and Japan, as well as many - if not most - countries in Europe. According to this pro-government party leader, all these countries should all subscribe to the "fair use" "update" that the US issues.
Forget about President Xi Jinping's "three confidences" in the nation's direction, theory and institutions - Hong Kong's head of IP enforcement reassured the public that the new copyright law was not "the Internet's version of Article 23". In her mind, Article 23 is something that is evil and, therefore, a law is good if it is "not Article 23".
This IP enforcement official has been with the Hong Kong government's IP enforcement agency for over a decade. She is not pro-establishment, but is part of the establishment. What she said reminds me of the slogan that our top government officials came up with for the last electoral reform package. They asked us to "pocket it first", meaning clearly that "it is not as good as you would like". Our bureaucrats have no confidence at all in what they are doing.
This brings us to the last and most incriminating piece of evidence showing that our pro-establishment politicians do not support the copyright bill - the frequent adjournment of Legislative Council meetings because of the lack of a quorum.
Dissident lawmakers have managed to push back discussions of the proposed Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2014 until next year. The debate simply ran out of time in the last full meeting of 2015. Dissident lawmakers requested the quorum bell - which triggers a headcount - 59 times. This was in an attempt to stall the debate. The meeting was prolonged over 10 hours and lasted a total of two and a half days.
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Gregory So Kam-leung, who is responsible for the bill, thanked the lawmakers present at the meeting, especially pro-establishment lawmakers. They returned to the chamber in time during the multiple quorum counts in order to avoid the meeting being adjourned.
The question really is: Why were these pro-establishment lawmakers outside the chamber during meetings in the first place? LegCo has a total of 70 lawmakers. Among them, 43 belong to the pro-establishment camp. These 43 lawmakers alone constitute a quorum and could have passed by themselves any government-proposed bills. These bills only require a simple majority.
What we need are more dedicated lawmakers who truly believe in what they are supporting.

Source: China Daily