Anti-government protesters singing the protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong” as they gather in a shopping mall in 2019: Photo: AFPNetizens in Hong Kong continue to be blocked from access to certain YouTube clips of a banned protest anthem of the city. This is despite a call from US lawmakers to lift the restrictions. Legal experts have noted that the streaming platform faces practical difficulties in meeting the demand.
In a related development, the production team behind “Glory to Hong Kong”, Dgxmusic, said the tune was again removed from music platforms by New York-based distributor DistroKid “without explanation”.
A check by the SCMP on Thursday evening found versions of the tune released by Dgxmusic were no longer available on Apple Music, Spotify and KKBox.
Versions of “Glory to Hong Kong” had made a brief comeback on various platforms in late May, days after the previous distributor, Scottish-based Emubands, decided to pull the plug on the tunes citing prohibitively high legal costs associated with a Hong Kong appeal court injunction that sought to restrict the song’s circulation.
Dgxmusic said on Instagram that the two contributors’ compliance of the injunction was “extremely concerning” as the order had no extraterritorial effect, calling the takedowns “in violation of basic human rights” and posing “a severe threat to the fundamental principles of Western democracies”.
The SCMP has contacted DistroKid for comment.
Earlier, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan panel that advises the United States’ Congress and president, urged YouTube and its owner Google to restore 32 videos removed as a result of the injunction granted in May.
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The injunction bans people from “broadcasting, performing, printing, publishing, selling, offering for sale, distributing, disseminating, displaying or reproducing [the song] in any way” with specific intentions, such as inciting others to separate Hong Kong from the rest of China or committing a seditious act.
But exemptions were made for academic and journalistic purposes, which were underscored in the Wednesday letter by Republican Congressman Chris Smith and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who argued that YouTube’s restriction “appears to exceed what is required by the order”.
“Categorically making the song inaccessible from Hong Kong means that scholars, journalists, and others intending to conduct lawful [per the order] activities are deprived of the opportunity of using the song,” the panel’s co-chairs said.
The streaming giant said it was “continuing to investigate options” to appeal the order and highlighted it had pushed back against the Hong Kong government’s demand to remove the videos “for over a year”.
Still, YouTube did not say it would stop restricting access to the 32 videos from within Hong Kong.
The clips in question, including several versions released by Dgxmusic, remained unavailable to Hong Kong-based users as of Thursday afternoon.
People using YouTube at other locations also have to accept a disclaimer that reads “this video may be inappropriate for some users” before they can access the content.
Professor Simon Young Ngai-man, from the law faculty of the University of Hong Kong, said streaming services could not disable access based on individual users’ purposes, and therefore they had to apply what they considered “the most practical way” to comply with the court order.
Ronny Tong Ka-wah, a barrister who also sits on the Hong Kong government’s key decision-making Executive Council, said it was “hard to imagine” there was still a need to keep the song accessible online for academic and journalistic purposes.
“Courts always look at substance and not the label, so it’s dangerous [for YouTube] to make songs generally available on the pretext that they can be used academically and journalistically,” he said.
“Providers have the duty to consider a common-sense approach not to make available the song to satisfy one or two genuine uses but enable widespread illegal uses.”
But he reiterated that the government had to maintain dialogue with the platforms and appeal to their “community conscience” to prevent the song from spreading into the city from outside, given that the injunction order had no legal effect outside Hong Kong.
The government first sought an interim injunction targeting “Glory to Hong Kong” last year, after Google resisted authorities’ demand to take down links directing to the music. But the Court of First Instance blocked the government’s request, with the judge expressing concerns over the order’s effect on Google.
The Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the government in May, saying the song had become a weapon for “justifying and even romanticising and glorifying the unlawful and violent acts inflicted on Hong Kong in the past few years”.
The song has been mistakenly played instead of the Chinese national anthem “March of the Volunteers” at several major sports events in recent years.