-6B. 12. The forum’s operation The forum was known as the Hong Kong Golden Forum with the URL 7 addresses http://forum7.hkgolden.com and http://forum4.hkgolden.com. The forum had different discussion “channels” catering for various interests of users, including channels concerning computer products and software, games, photography, academic matters, music, finance, sports, entertainment, mobile phones and leisure. The leisure channel 8 was the most popular. Use of the forum was free, the respondents relying on advertising to generate income. 13. Anyone could browse the website but only persons who had registered as members were able to post messages on the forum. Someone wishing to register had to provide his or her name and certain other details, including a traceable e-mail address with a recognised internet service provider (“ISP”), rather than a more anonymous e-mail address from a web-based provider such as Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo. Membership was also conditional on accepting the rules of the forum which included a prohibition against postings with objectionable content, including defamation, pornography, harassment and infringing intellectual property rights. A person who successfully registered as a member adopted a forum nickname and would automatically be assigned a password. A member who violated the rules might have his membership suspended or terminated. 14. Although the evidence indicated that the details purportedly provided by persons registering as members were very often obviously fictitious, the condition that they provide an e-mail address with a recognised ISP was of some significance. In the present case, the appellants obtained 7 Universal Resource Location, that is, the sequence of letters that identifies and locates resources on the World Wide Web and on the computer hosting the particular website. 8 It was suggested at the hearing that the Chinese title of the channel is better translated as “Gossip” rather than “Leisure”.