Tech News

Schoolchildren recruited as copyright 'spies' in Hong Kong

Jan 20, 2006, 11:29 GMT

Hong Kong - Thousands of Hong Kong youngsters were Friday being recruited to report cases of internet copyright piracy to customs officers. The city's Customs and Excise Department has begun training youth groups to use a web page to report illegal file-sharing activities using BitTorrent technology. A customs spokesman said up to 200,000 youngsters were expected to be recruited in the campaign which is also aimed at raising awareness about internet piracy issues. Under the scheme, youngsters will be given a blacklist of suspect websites to monitor and asked to report any illegal uploading activities that they discover through the customs web page. A jobless Hong Kong man was last year jailed for uploading three Hollywood movies onto the internet using BitTorrent in what was believed to be the world's first case of its kind. BitTorrent is a technology which allows for rapid uploading and downloading of video files and is legal provided it is not used to distribute copyrighted movies or programmes. Customs officers detected nearly 10,000 cases of copyright infringement in the city of 6.8 million last year, a 12 per cent increase on the previous year. © 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

On the Web

Blowing Up Blogs

Place your ad here
Loading...

Your Talkback on this Story

Latest Headlines in Tech

Older Talkback

page: 1

billy pooperJan 20th, 2006 - 16:41:47

I like children almost as much as i like good dooooogys

Report this comment

StorytellerJul 30th, 2009 - 13:53:30

Monstrous, completely Orwellian. An entire generation of children being raised to be politically correct control-freaks. The public cannot accept this.

Report this comment

page: 1

Tech News

Schoolchildren recruited as copyright 'spies' in Hong Kong

On the Web

Your Talkback on this Story

Latest Headlines in Tech

Older Talkback

Like M&C on Facebook

Viral Web

In Monsters and Critics

Corporate

The Fine Print