*********************************************************
The Government today released results of a public opinion survey on the review of the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance (COIAO) jointly conducted with the Public Opinion Programme (POP) of the University of Hong Kong.
As part of the first round of the public consultation on the review which ended early this year, the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) commissioned the POP last December to conduct a random telephone survey in January to gauge the public's knowledge of and opinion towards the review. Target respondents were Cantonese-speaking people aged 15 or above and over 1,500 of them responded.
The respondents expressed various views on different aspects of the COIAO, including the definitions of obscenity and indecency, classification of articles, adjudication system, regulation of obscene and indecent articles on the Internet, penalties and publicity. Demographic analyses of views about the COIAO in terms of gender, age, education attainment and occupation are featured in the survey.
"Together with the 18,800 submissions we received from individuals and organisations during the consultation, this feedback has helped us gain a comprehensive understanding of the community's concerns and expectations on the regulation of obscene and indecent articles distributed over various media platforms," the Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing, Ms Maisie Cheng, said at a press briefing today.
"Taking into account all the views collected, we are preparing more concrete proposals to improve the regulatory regime for a second round of consultation and the public will be invited to comment on the proposals," Ms Cheng said, adding that all the views will be documented in a report to be released later this year.
For the executive summary of the POP survey, please refer to the file attached to the press release. The full report of the survey is available at www.coiao.gov.hk and hkupop.hku.hk.
Ends/Friday, May 8, 2009
Issued at HKT 15:01
NNNN
