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The effect of such uploading by Appellant was that not only
could subscribers of Asiaonline have access to the pictures, but such
pictures could be transmitted to other Newservers of other ISPs both in
Hong Kong and overseas. The pictures could then be downloaded and
viewed as the Inspector had done.
Mr. Grossman, who had appeared for Appellant at trial,
essentially rehearsed on appeal the same argument he had put before the
Magistrate, which was that the prosecution had failed to prove the 3
essential elements of the offence: (a) whether the material constituted an
article, (b) whether there had been publication of the material, and (c)
whether publication had been made to the public or a section of the
public. He argued that the Ordinance, which came into effect on 1st
September 1987 could not have any relevance to an article such as a
graphic computer file which was simply the transmission of an electrical
stream.
“Article” is defined in section 2 (1) of the Ordinance as:“anything consisting of or containing material to be
read or looked at or both read and looked at, any
sound recording, and any film, video-tape, disc or
other record of a picture or pictures.”
Section 2(4) provides :“For the purposes of this Ordinance, other than
section 24(1E) and (1F), a person publishes an
article if he, whether or not for gain,
(a) distributes, circulates, sells, hires, gives or lends
the article to the public or a section of the public;
(b) in the case of an article,