TNAG-0265-FCO40-301-Legislation-for-copyright-in-Hong-Kong-1970 — Page 164

2.

P23124

MR. WELLS:

LORD DIPLOCK:

Diffusion over wires is not a restricted act in the Copyright Act, 1956. The draft Ordinance purports to make it a restricted act. That is the heart of the matter, and we say that in enlarging the sphere or restricted acts and adding to the catalogue of restricted acts the draft Ordinance also purports to amend the definitions of "sound broadcast" and"television broadcast", which is contrary to the meaning of the Acts and beyond the scope of the modifications permitted by section 31(3). My Lord, those contentions may be right or wrong. That is a matter for the trial of the

LORD PEARSON:

MR. WELLS:

action.

Section 14 has to be modified to a colony such as Hong Kong, because the only copyright created in section 14 is in a television broadcast or a sound broadcast made by the Corporation or the Authority, so there has got to be a modification anyway. You are complaining that the modification which applies it to rediffusion as well as to ordinary television and a sound broadcast in Hong Kong and which creates the further restriction that you must not rediffuse does not fall within section 31(3). There is no doubt a very interesting argument about it which we do not have to decide.

In a sense it is neither a modification nor an

addition such as is proper.

That is what it comes to.

P. 24/25

LORD MORRIS:

MR. WELLS:

LORD MORRIS:

MR. WELLS:

LORD DONOVAN:

MR. WELLS:

How long would the argument take on the construction a far shorter time than the arguments in deciding whether you can decide it?

I respectfully agree, but, with respect, that is not my fault.

It,

My Lord Morris has asked me whether I cannot summarise the evidence contained in the Oldridge affidavit. Indeed I can if that is sufficient for your Lordships' purposes, really amounts to this, that we are operating in Hong Kong under licences granted by the Government of Hong Kong.

One of the benefits conferred by the licence is the exclusive right to diffuse radio and television programmes over wires, and this draft Ordinance, by making the diffusion of a programme, contrary to the law in this country, a restricted act, cuts at the very root of our business in so far as we diffuse other people's programmes rather than originating

our own.

I suppose that would be common ground, that, if this Ordinance were passed, it would materially affect you? That is probably common ground.

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I cannot resist a smile when your Lordship asks that question, because there is amongst the letters from Mr.Hamilton a letter which says "It will not affect you very much anyway", and in that letter there emerges quite clearly and I do not blame him at all; it took a long time to understand it myself the difference between a copyright in an originated work and a copyright in a broadcast programme.

Whoever wrote that sentence could not possibly have understood what the facts were. The Hong Kong T.V. people may have said: We will not give you a licence.

Exactly.