13 August 1993
BY FAX
Peter Harrison Esq
Government Secretariat
Recreation and Culture Branch
41st Floor, Revenue Tower
5 Gloucester Road
Wan Chai
Hong Kong
SWAG
270-2653
SUBSCRIPTION TELEVISION COPYRIGHT PROTECTION
1.
Our Legal Advisers have carefully considered Hong Kong telno 1013, which sets out the need for a stop gap measure to provide copyright protection for Cable Television due to come on stream in October. They have advised that, regrettably, it is not possible to make an Order under the Cable and Broadcasting Act 1984 extending its provisions to Hong Kong, because it does not contain the necessary legal powers.
2. FCO and DTI legal advisers both take the view that powers available to modify by Order in Council the existing Hong Kong Copyright Orders are very limited. The DTI legal adviser takes the view that the power in in para 36 (2) of Schedule 1 to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to vary existing Orders applies only to provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 which had already been extended to Hong Kong before the 1988 Act entered into force. In other words that the powers in Section 31 of the 1956 Act, which were saved by para 36(2) of Schedule 1 to the 1988 Act, must be read together with the the restrictions in para 36(2).
3. According to this view, we cannot even use the powers in para 36(2) to make amendments to your Orders equivalent to the amendments to the 1956 Act made by the Cable and Broadcasting Act 1984. This is because the 1984 Act does not merely modify the existing provisions of the 1956 Act, it also inserts entirely new provisions to extend the scope of the Act to cable programmes. All we could do under para 36(2) is modify provisions of the 1956 Act which had already been extended to Hong Kong before 1988. We could of course likewise modify the amendments made to the 1956 Act by the Copyright (Computer Software) Amendment Act 1985 as extended
Let2.SubTV
AB
પર
1
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