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CONFIDENTIAL
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both Companies on the basis that the matter was one for them and not for legislative intervention. If this attempt had succeeded, a broadcasting company's copyright would not have included the right to control relay; although there would still have been substantial difficulties in RTV's way in relaying TVB's broadcasts without the latter's co-operation, arising from RTV's need first to obtain the consent of the owners of the original copyright material used in TVB's broadcasts.
(d) This proposal produced an equally explosive
reaction from TVB, and, after considering the matter in November 1967, I decided to put the draft Copyright Bill to the Executive Council as it had been drafted on the basis of my advisers' earlier advice. My view then was that both Companies should be entitled to control relay of their broadcasts. In reaching this decision, I took account of the fact that RTV's licence under the Telecommunications Ordinance, being expressly subject to the copyright law for the time being, gave that Company no right to be able to claim to infringe whatever should be considered to be the proper copyright in broadcasts.
(e) The Executive Council endorsed my view at a
meeting in January 1968.
The aim of the copyright law is to prevent commercial exploitation of a broadcasting company's property in its broadcasts, whether wireless or wired, and I consider that relay ought to be a restricted act because it is an element of that property. I can see no reason in commonsense or justice why a broadcasting company ought not to be able to control, as we propose, every form of commercial use to which programmes in which it has invested money and technical or artistic effort are put. When the Assistant to the Law Officers was in London in June 1968, the Board of Trade confirmed their view that control of relay is a right which naturally belongs to a broadcasting company and acknowledged that the position in England was exceptional in that neither the BBC nor ITA sought control of relay, and the Copyright Act was drawn accordingly. You will see at once how different is the position in Hong Kong, where the relay company also originates its own broadcasts in competition with those of the company whose broadcasts it seeks to relay at will.
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I do not think that you question the correctness in principle of the basis on which Hong Kong decided that a broadcasting company should have the rights to control relay as one of the ways in which its broadcasts might be put to commercial use by others, and I have set out our reasons, and the other foregoing matters, at such length in order to make it clear that :-
/(a) getting TVB
CONFIDENTIAL