(Those photos were shot at the Wan Chai and i did it with photoshop because i am not quite sure they are gay bar or not)
In Hong Kong, there are a lot of bars for the citizens to have fun at night; among them, gay bars as well as the lesbian bars are also welcomed by the local homosexuals and some interested people. These bars give a room for the homosexuals to communicate and to be relax, besides with the development of Hong Kong, people become more and more open mind today than ten years ago. The gay bars is not that unique and accepted by more people.

(This photo was shot in Wanchai,Hong Kong)
More and more homosexuals come out the closet compared with decade before. They are walking with their helpmates in the public places and they don’t deny their homosexual orientation. People tend to be themselves and live with their own life style, say some girls dress up themselves as boys and on the contrary, some boys looks like girls.To me, it’s not a bad thing.

(In-media, shot in Wanchai)
In-media is known as its open mind and it cares about all the people in the society. Recently years, it actively engages in homosexual issues in Hongkong and makes voice for the homosexuals in Hong Kong which arouses hot debates and warmly responses. Besides, it’s also an important information source of Hongkong homosexuals to me.

(This photo was shot around Causewaybay)
Public Washrooms ever acted as a gathering place for homosexuals, especially for the queers all around the world. The public washrooms in Hongkong also play an important in the development of homosexuals. Today, homosexuals get more room in the society and as to me, public washroom is not as significant as before. However, as markable gathering places, many public washrooms in Hongkong witness the evolution of homosexuals. Many public washrooms are known as their status among homosexuals in Hongkong, say in Kawloon, Wanchai, and so on.

(Shot in Admiralty)
According to the Hong Kong homosexuals information provided by Yahoo Kimo, the shopping mall in Pacific Place is also a famous place for homosexuals gathering. So i took this photo.

The article how I learned to stop worrying and love Creative Commons wrote by Andrew Heavens gives me another shock brought by the power of New Media.. Just several photos published in Flickr enable attract “many hundreds of visitors a day” and in the following few weeks, the people related with the issue all around the world, say from Melbourne, from Geneva, from New York, from Rome held their own demonstrations by using those photos.

This kind of situations is not fresh today but it’s really hard for us to imagine in the age of traditional media, firstly, the speed of news disseminating today is so exciting; then, the scales that the new medias covers are so unbelievable. However, meanwhile, another problem turning up as Foust said in his book, Chapter 10 “copyright is especially important on the internet because no previous medium has made it so easy to copy its content.” Absolutely, copying today just means two actions by your finger: “copy” and “paste”.

In China, privacy was not a noticeable topic until recent years. So as a Chinese, it’s very seldom for me to think about copyright and privacy things seriously. However, after reading the several articles about this topic , as a reader, I strongly agree with Lawrence Lessig said “the history of the content industry is a history of piracy”in Some Like it Hot. Especially in the age of internet, the bomb of information and revolution of IT make publishing news no longer the absolute power of few Medias like TV, radio and newspapers. Besides, to me, sharing information is the most outstanding feature of internet, and because of its sharing function, the connection among the world is closer and closer. Thus, too much permission request and copyright debate seems blocks of the sharing. But as a journalist, I also can’t deny that illegal copyright is becoming a big threat for the online journalists’ benefit.

This balance as Lessig said “weighing the protection of the law against the strong public interest in continued innovation” is hard to control. But as founder of Creative Commons (CC), Lawrence Lessig has already given a beautiful answer to the public. After reading the mission of Creative Commons, I think it finds out a method to balance the law and public interest. As it says in its website “protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them”, it provides alternatives to these restrictions from traditional monopolistic content industry and personally another challenge for the statues of traditional media.

Because CC is a nonprofit organization and without boundary in the world, in Hong Kong journalists also can apply it. It’s a good way to avoid the readers or the other journalists to reprint works and meanwhile sharing it with the others. But since CC is really new for me, it really need time for may be all of us to understand it both of its strong points and shortcomings.

All in all, although there are still many problems in copyright of online journalism, for me, even as journalist it’s really not a bad thing to “sit back and watch where your photos (works) end up”. And sometimes, if you really love your works, it’s a good idea to set them free.