According to section 31(2) of the Prevention of Copyright Piracy Ordinance, the Commissioner of Customs and Excise shall maintain a register on licensees for inspection by members of public. Including in the register are the name of licensee/company, manufacturing address, licence's valid period, assigned manufacturer's code and types of optical discs manufactured.

Members of the public can inspect the register during office hours at the Optical Disc Licence Division of Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau. Photocopying services are also available to the public at the government standard fees.

At present, the import or export of optical discs, including VCD and CD-R, is not subject to any control. Nevertheless, an importer or exporter must lodge the trade declaration required under the Import ordinance.

Any person, who imports or exports ODMRE, must apply for an import or export licence by completing the stipulated forms (for import - use Form 3(TRA 187); export - use Form 6(TRA394)).

He must submit the respective application forms and the necessary supporting documents to the Optical Disc License Division before the importation or exportation of ODMRE. Under normal circumstances, the licence can be issued within two working days.

The import/export licence form can be purchased at HK$26 and HK$16 respectively for twenty sets (in triplicate) at the Trade and Industry Department at Room 104, 1/F, Trade and Industry Department Tower, 700 Nathan Road, Kowloon (Tel No. 2398 5325).

In respect of the Import Licence Form 3 (Supplement) and Export Licence Form 6 (Supplement), they can be obtained free of charge from the Optical Disc Licence Division.

According to the Prevention of Copyright Piracy Ordinance, a licensee must mark the assigned manufacturer's code onto every optical disc manufacturer by him. There is no exemption for CD-R or CD-RW production. Any failure to comply with the condition of marking the manufacturer's code is liable to prosecution.