<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/23/chinese-authorities-demand-global-censorship-of-protest-anthem-glory-to-hong-kong/>
"It’s hardly a secret that the Chinese government is obsessed with controlling
everything that its citizens see or do online —
Techdirt has written dozens
of stories on the topic over the years. But control within China’s borders
isn’t enough, it seems: the authorities there now want the ability to censor
material globally. The latest move concerns ‘Glory To Hong Kong’, which
Wikipedia describes as:
a protest song that was composed and written by a musician under the
pseudonym “Thomas dgx yhl”, with the contribution of a group of Hongkonger
netizens from the online forum LIHKG during the 2019–2020 Hong Kong
protests. It was initially written in Cantonese and was eventually developed
into various language versions starting with English.
It became the unofficial anthem of the pro-democracy protests, and was
considered powerful enough to warrant an explicit ban in Hong Kong’s extreme
National Security Law, passed in 2020. Now the Chinese authorities, through
their proxies in the Hong Kong government, are seeking to censor the song from
online services, reported here by the
Guardian:
Variations of the song distributed by DGX Music, the team of creators who
own the rights to the title, were no longer available on Spotify, Apple’s
iTunes, Facebook and KKBOX worldwide on Wednesday, though a rendition
performed by a Taiwanese band still remained. Several music videos were also
accessible on YouTube on Thursday.
In a social media post on Wednesday, DGX Music said it was handling
“technical issues unrelated to the streaming platforms” and apologised for
the “temporary impact”.
Those “technical issues” are in fact legal ones.
Article 19 explains:
On 6 June, the Hong Kong government sought a court order banning the
‘broadcasting, performing, printing, publishing, selling, offering for sale,
distributing, disseminating, displaying or reproducing in any way’ the
protest anthem which the government claims constitutes secession. The
injunction would block, and potentially criminalise, all internet
intermediaries, from the streaming media platforms [Apple’s iTunes, Spotify,
Facebook and Instagram’s Reels] to YouTube and Google, from providing access
to the song for Hong Kong internet users."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
