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Following is the transcript of the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr John Tsang, speaking to the media at the Legislative Council today (January 13) about the illegal download of copyright materials:

Reporter: I understand that a man was arrested today because of using BT. What effect do you think it will have on those using BT? Any effort to clamp down ..........

SCIT: We've always been very serious about doing this type of enforcement action against people using illegal means of infringing copyrights. What we have done today is to arrest someone using P2P type of infringement action. This is the first one that we have done and I hope that this would serve as a model for the following action we will be taking. I hope that people in Hong Kong would take this as a reminder that they should not do this sort of infringement action and I want to remind particularly parents and teachers to remind their children and students that this sort of infringement could cause quite a heavy penalty.

Reporter: The film industry has been urging the Government to clamp down on the violation of infringing intellectual property rights. Can you forewarn what kind of action against BT will be taken?

SCIT: The kind of action that we've always been taking is against people who sell illegal software, illegal DVD and so forth, and now people using electronic means will be clamping down as well.

Report: Any priority?

SCIT: They are all priorities.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)

Ends/Thursday, January 13, 2005

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