1. On 15 May 2011, the Respondent took part in an event to raise awareness of issues faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community. The event was held in a public pedestrian precinct on the part of Lockhart Road between East Point Road and Cannon Street, Causeway Bay, designated as a pedestrian street at the relevant time and included a performance on a temporary stage involving music, chanting of slogans and dance (the “Dance”). 2. On the day of the event, the Appellant considered that the Dance constituted “public entertainment” under section 2 of the Places of Public Entertainment Ordinance (the “PPEO”), namely “any entertainment within the meaning of this Ordinance to which the general public is admitted with or without payment” and that the location of the Dance was a “place of public entertainment”. The Dance was stopped after the Appellant informed the organisers that a licence under the PPEO was required. 3. The issue in the appeal was whether, and in what circumstances, on the true construction of the PPEO, an entertainment which was presented or carried on in a public street or other publicly accessible open space was one for which the organisers were required to obtain a licence. That question in turn depended on whether the Dance was a “public entertainment” and whether the place where it was presented or carried on was a “place of public entertainment”. The Court of First Instance held that the organisers of the Dance were required to obtain a licence under the PPEO. The Court of Appeal, on the other hand, held that they were not so required. 4. The Court of Final Appeal, by a majority of 3:2, dismissed the appeal and held that the organisers of the Dance were not required to obtain a licence under the PPEO. A “public entertainment” as defined under the PPEO required that it be one “to which the general public is admitted”. According to the majority, the requirement was that the public be admitted to the place of entertainment, and not merely to the entertainment. The licence requirement under the PPEO was directed at persons who presented or carried on public entertainments in respect of their keeping or using places of public entertainment. Legislative history suggested that the admission of the public involved an admission to a locality. The Chinese text “讓公眾入場” of the definition of “public entertainment” also supported the view that it was concerned with the admission to the place of entertainment, and not merely to the entertainment. 5. The majority held that the word “admitted” should be construed in an active sense and as requiring some form of control over the admission to the place. The natural and ordinary meaning of the word “admitted” suggested an active sense of giving permission to enter or have access or letting a person in. If admission of the public to an entertainment did not imply some control over admission or exclusion, a number of surprising and unintended results would follow, catching buskers and other informal entertainments. 6. On the facts, the organisers of the Dance did not have the power to exclude other persons from the pedestrian precinct where the Dance was presented or carried on. The public was not admitted to the pedestrian precinct. Accordingly, the pedestrian precinct was not a place of public entertainment under the PPEO. The organisers of the Dance were not required to obtain a licence. Dissenting judgment of Ribeiro PJ (Ma CJ agreeing): 7. According to the minority, the definition of “public entertainment” was concerned with the nature of the entertainment rather than the place where it was presented. An entertainment became a public entertainment because the general public were “admitted” to the entertainment. The definition made no mention of the place at which the entertainment was staged. There was no requirement that the general public had to be “admitted” to such a place before the duty to obtain a licence arose. 8. The minority did not accept the majority’s view that a place to which persons were admitted necessarily implied a means of controlling admission. As a matter of language, “admitted” meant there was some place open to or accessible to the general public. It might most commonly be used in relation to a locality, but it was by no means confined to such usage. 9. The minority accepted that the Chinese text of the definition of “public entertainment”, especially the expression “入場”, carried a connotation of “locality” which did not exist in the English text. Having regard to the object and purpose of the PPEO, namely the promotion of public safety, the meaning which best reconciled the English and Chinese texts was the construction based on the English text in accordance with section 10B of the Interpretation and General Clauses Ordinance.