Hong Kong: more on blogger Oiwan Lam, Flickr, 'net obscenity laws

Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon (who is also a Journalism prof at the University of Hong Kong), writes:

A Global Voices editor, Oiwan Lam (shown here), faces obscenity charges in Hong Kong for posting an artsy picture of a bare-breasted woman on InMedia HK, a local citizen media website. The picture came from Flickr.

A month *AFTER* Oiwan posted the photo but *BEFORE* Oiwan's article was ruled "indecent" by Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal, the photo was censored to Hong Kong's Flickr users as part of Flickr's new geo-censoring system which has just been rolled out in an effort to comply with local laws.

There are many unanswered questions about causes, effects, and implications.

In this blog post, I raise a few.

Link to full text on MacKinnon's blog (thanks, Ethan Zuckerman).

Previously on BoingBoing:

Hong Kong: blogger faces 12 months or $HK400K for linking

Hong Kong: the Flickr'd photo that got blogger Oiwan in trouble