HONG KONG — A new university public opinion poll has convinced Hong Kong lawmakers they have a mandate to impose tighter restrictions on internet content of a sexually explicit nature.The Hong Kong University poll of 1,500 adults, commissioned by the government as part of a study of the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance, revealed three-quarters of respondents believe the Web is too smutty. According to the poll, residents want officials to increase penalties and step up efforts to enforce decency online.

Fewer than 10-percent of respondents indicated they feel the Obscene Articles Tribunal — the body charged with enforcing the ordinance — is doing its job. Forty percent said they favor abolishing the tribunal and appointing a single magistrate to decide the fate of potentially offensive materials. However, sixty percent of poll-takers approved of dumping the current system in its entirety and establishing an independent structure under which jurors would make the decisions.

Hong Kong lawmakers are attempting to strike a balance between free and open access to information and reining in “indecent material” that may be harmful to minors. They plan to solicit a second round of public input later this year, with a special focus on how online behaviors may translate into real-world activities.

“A phenomenon that concerns many people is compensated dating [read ‘prostitution’], which sprang from the internet,” Chan Kam-lam of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong told The Standard.

Potential bleed-over from the virtual world concerns a number of lawmakers, including Independent representative Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, who told The Standard, “Online activities should be supervised like real-world activities.”