Dear iProA Members and Friends,

Being a relatively new Exco member of iProA, it is my honour to present the covering letter for this month’s Newsletter.  I serve in the Policy Committee which focuses on policy related issues affecting the ICT sector and makes necessary responses and recommendations to the relevant stakeholders.

This year, under the good leadership of the Chairman Mr. Matthew Lui together with the concerted efforts from all committee members, the Policy Committee have made a substantial contribution to arouse the community and the Government’s awareness on a number of important issues, while at the same time uplifted the profile of iProA.  To name just a few, we have made a submission on April 30 to the then Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau on Copyright Protection in the Digital Equipment.  On June 12, a press conference was held to discuss the alarming declining trend of Hong Kong ICT competitiveness as revealed by the falling NRI (Network Readiness Index) over the past three years.  This has aroused quite a considerable attention from the public and attracted noticeable media coverage.  A follow-up report was also published on June 28.  On Sep 3, our recommendations on policy direction beneficial to the ICT sector and the local community were submitted to the Financial Secretary and the Central Policy Unit for their consideration.  You may refer to our website for the above documents.

On a personal basis, I had the privilege to present a talk on behalf of iProA titled “Web 2.0 + Knowledge Management => a Blue Ocean strategy in the new Internet wave” at the Web 2.0 Seminar on July 24.  At the coming Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan Technology Forum on 29 and 30 November organized by the Engineering Institutes of the aforementioned three cities I will be presenting a paper on behalf of iProA with the title “2008 – A New Milestone On The Development Of Intelligent Transportation Systems In Hong Kong”.

Even though my affiliation with iProA is only about six months, I have discovered this is an energetic, innovative, versatile and accommodating association with a lot of highly talented members.  I really enjoyed being a member of iProA and hope you share the same feelings.

Last but not least, let me share a tip with you.  From now on, you may be easily caught if you are using Bit Torrent (BT) downloading copyrighted material from the Internet.  According to information from the Centre of Information Security & Cryptography, University of Hong Kong (source: http://www.cs.hku.hk/cisc/news/7Sept2007/HKICC2007(final).pdf), they have jointly developed with  the Customs and Excise Department (C&ED) an artificial intelligent system called "Lineament Monitoring System", capable of performing 24-hour automatic monitoring of copyright infringement by BT users on the Internet (source http://www.iproa.org/web/Newsletter/files/Lineament Monitoring System.pdf ).  So please watch out next time when you are using BT downloading materials from the Internet!

Best regards,

Dr. Roger So

Executive Committee Member

Internet Professional Association

iProA Newsletter: December 2007