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.”