*************************************
Following is a question by the Hon Tsang Yok-sing and a written reply by the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, Mr Joseph WP Wong, in the Legislative Council today (January 17):
Question:
In order to reduce the harmful effect on young people caused by obscene and indecent information on the Internet, the Government provided funding of 1.2 million dollars in May 2003 to commission the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association to implement the Internet Content Rating System (ICRS) for 12 months. The content providers which voluntarily joined ICRS can conduct self-assessment on the contents at their web sites, and attach content labels to the web pages of their web sites. Internet surfers could then use free filter software to select web sites accessible by their computers according to their preferences and the criteria set in the labels. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the effectiveness of ICRS and whether its objectives had been achieved;
(b) why it did not continue to provide funding for ICRS, and whether it has considered or implemented the observations and recommendations on ICRS made by the Director of Audit in his Report No. 42 published in March 2004;
(c) whether it will follow up the situation that content labels are still being displayed on the web pages of some local web sites; and
(d) of the alternative plans being implemented, and how the new plans compare to ICRS in terms of resource requirement and effectiveness?
Reply:
Madam President,
Developed by the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), a non-profit-making organisation based in the United Kingdom, the Internet Content Rating System (ICRS) is an international website labelling scheme which comprises two elements:
(a) an on-line system for webmasters all over the world to voluntarily rate and label their websites to indicate whether their websites contain any content unsuitable for Internet users especially minors, e.g., nudity and sexual materials, depiction of violence, crude language, gambling, drugs and alcohol matters, etc.; and
(b) a free-of-charge filtering software for use by Internet users to set preferences in their web browsers to allow and disallow access to websites based on the labels in (a) above.
To promote the use of the ICRS by webmasters and Internet users in Hong Kong, a promotional project known as "the ICRS Project" was launched by the Hong Kong Internet Services Provider Association (HKISPA), which was funded by the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA). The Project was a time-limited one, originally intended to run from June 2003 to May 2004 and subsequently extended to May 2005.
Regarding parts (a) to (d) of the question, my reply is as follows:
(a) The Project largely achieved its purpose. The general public has been informed of the availability of the ICRS and the need to filter off undesirable contents on the Internet. Please see (b) below on the statistics of the performance of the Project upon its completion in May 2005.
(b) In March 2004, the Director of Audit in his Report No. 42 recommended that upon completion of the project in May 2004, TELA should review it, and should develop a publicity campaign to promote the use of the ICRS as well as set performance targets on the implementation of the Project if TELA decided to continue with it.
Having reviewed the case, TELA extended the funding for the Project for another year up to May 2005 in order to consolidate the results achieved in the first-year implementation. TELA also implemented the Audit recommendations by developing a promotion strategy (including holding workshops, seminars, exhibitions, roadshows and marketing via telephone, email and print media) and setting concrete targets to measure the performance of the Project.
Set out below are the performance targets and results of the Project upon completion.
Performance Target set in 2004 Actual result achieved
Indicators by May 2005
Total number of 1 000 960
websites in Hong Kong
labelled under the ICRS
Percentage of websites 70% 64%
of active Internet Service (15 out of 22) (14 out of 22)
Service Providers in
Hong Kong labelled under
the ICRS
Percentage of top 100 30% 28%
websites in Hong Kong
labelled under the ICRS
Number of downloads of 10 000 14 000
the ICRS filtering
software by Internet
users in Hong Kong
The Project largely achieved the intended purpose of promoting the concept of website self-labelling by webmasters and Internet content filtering by Internet users in Hong Kong. In view of this, the Project came to an end in May 2005.
(c) Although the Project was completed in May 2005, the ICRS itself is an on-going scheme run by the ICRA and webmasters and Internet users in Hong Kong can continue using the ICRS services on ICRA's website (http://www.icra.org/). Webmasters are welcome to continue using the labels of the ICRS to indicate that their websites have been rated and labelled under the ICRS. TELA and HKISPA also continue providing information about the ICRS on their website (http://www.tela.gov.hk/icrs/eng/index.html).
(d) TELA has been promoting healthy web surfing by a wide range of measures from time to time. The Project was one of such measures. Other measures include holding an annual "Meritorious Website Contest" and subsidising non-government organisations to promote the safe and healthy use of the Internet. Given the different nature of various measures, the outcome of the Project and those of other measures like the Meritorious Website Contest cannot be directly compared.
Ends/Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Issued at HKT 14:48
NNNN