Re: Oiwan Lam's expensive fight against an unpopular tribunal

Blogging coverage of Oiwan's case is still going strong in English, locally for the most part.

Rebecca MacKinnon, professor of new media journalism at Hong Kong University goes through some of the tough questions that need to be asked about Oiwan's lawsuit—can Oiwan afford it? Does Oiwan deserve it? Does Hong Kong?—in her July 21 RConversation post, Oiwan Lam's expensive fight against an unpopular tribunal:

"Knowing that the publication of unpixellated nipples has always been a big no-no for media in Hong Kong, one could argue that Oiwan's blog post was ill-considered, especially given that she and her organization are financially unprepared for the legal battle she now faces as a result of her "civil disobedience." However, assuming that the prohibition on open publication of nipples is a community standard that the Hong Kong people want to uphold (which is not for me to judge), I hope that the OAT and the courts will consider that the context in which she posted the picture was very different from the context in which topless girlie pix are published in newspapers to boost circulation, or in which topless photos are posted on commercial websites to boost web traffic.

Oiwan posted the offending photo on a very serious (one might say very earnest) citizen media website which has no history of posting photos of scantily-clad or unclad women in order to boost traffic. Many blogs and websites that do post sexually provocative pix on a regular basis to boost their traffic - even some political sites - but Inmedia Hong Kong is definitely not one of them.

Furthermore, Oiwan published her the photo in the context of a heated political discussion about how TELA and OAT operate. One might argue that the tone of her post smacked of "bring it on" - which TELA and OAT certainly did. But is a possible HK$400,000 and 1-year jail sentence, plus a criminal record whether or not she gets jail time, a punishment commensurate with any possible harm to community standards that her picture could have caused? I just don't understand how that could be so."

One of the questions anwered in Rebecca's post is this: have the recent actions and decisions of the Television and Licensing Authority been representative of mainstream values in secular, postmodern Hong Kong? Friend of Oiwan Lam and merciless statistician Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth answers this and more with a triple-KO of posts over the past two days: Hong Kong By The Numbers, The Blog Ring of Artistic Nudes, and in More Tales From Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority.