The Hong Kong government lost its bid to wipe a controversial protest song from its internet, a rare victory for free speech in the city that could bolster faith in the finance hub’s rule of law. 

The High Court on Friday (Jul 28) declined the government’s application for an injunction to make it illegal for anyone with criminal intent to perform or broadcast Glory to Hong Kong, including the lyrics and melody, on grounds of national security. 

“Perfectly innocent people would distance themselves from what may be lawful acts involving the song for fear of trespassing the injunction which has severe consequences,” Judge Anthony Chan said in the written ruling. “The court must place great emphasis on safeguarding the fundamental rights of third parties who may be adversely affected.”

The government could still appeal the verdict.

Wiping the song from the city’s internet would have directly challenged the freedoms that differentiate the former British colony from mainland China. It would’ve also raised the legal risks for Silicon Valley tech giants – from Alphabet to Apple and Meta Platforms – that quit the mainland Chinese market years ago due to onerous censorship demands.

Google-parent Alphabet has been pressured by local authorities to change its algorithms because searches on its platform for Hong Kong’s national anthem return the protest song, which is also prominent on the company’s YouTube platform. Google, which has about 500 employees in Hong Kong, has refused to comply.  

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The case revived broader censorship concerns in the city, raising the prospect that tech firms would have to choose between acquiescing to Beijing or exiting the local market altogether. If companies decided it was too costly to continue operating in the city, it would have fundamentally reshaped Hong Kong’s internet overnight and devastated the open and free business environment it has long prided itself upon. 

At the heart of the issue was the longstanding debate over whether social media firms are responsible for content posted by users. Platforms in the US are protected under Section 230, a decades-old liability shield credited with helping the internet flourish. 

In Hong Kong, that immunity for tech giants has become an open question. A Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020 handed the government sweeping new powers to police the internet, including issuing take-down requests for material deemed in breach of the law.

In the wake of that China-drafted legislation, Western tech platforms temporarily suspended processing data requests from the city’s government, and even Beijing-based ByteDance decided to pull the plug on offering its TikTok app locally. 

When Hong Kong moved to strengthen its anti-doxxing laws a year later, a tech industry group representing the likes of Google and Facebook warned they would withdraw from the market if local employees were held responsible for online content on their platforms.

The case exposed how the city’s national security regime has narrowed the space for civil society and political freedoms. 

Earlier this month, a court sentenced a man to three months in prison after finding his use of the song Glory to Hong Kong was a violation under the city’s 2020 law that bans residents from disrespecting the Chinese national anthem. 

Authorities have increasingly tied existing laws to the national security legislation, as they’ve sought to expand the scope of such crimes. Since 2020, Hong Kong officials have revived a colonial-era sedition criminal law that had laid dormant for decades to prosecute dozens of individuals – mostly for social media posts– that are deemed seditious. 

The Hong Kong government is trying to find ways within the legal system to suppress individual freedoms, something the national security law has given them flexibility to do, said Dongshu Liu, an assistant professor specialising in Chinese politics at City University of Hong Kong. 

“In the future, from time to time, we’ll be seeing this kind of similar action again,” said Liu. BLOOMBERG