Review on Piracy in Malaysia

The post Piracy in Malaysia: Fighting through Education and Enforcement! dated 25th July 2007 is about the alarming software piracy rate in Malaysia – 60% of software is pirated while the world average is 35%.

Malaysia has taken action through Ops Tulen and Sikap Tulen to fight piracy.

Ops Tulen is the enforcement of law against pirated software with continuous raids on companies and vendors selling the illegal products. Millions ringgit worth of pirated products have been seized since 2002 until May 2007.

While Sikap Tulen is the education campaign aimed at educating target groups like professionals, company directors and the public about respecting intellectual property and turn away from piracy.

Even with the recent news of the King of Pop – Michael Jackson’s death, police has seized over 100,000 pirated CDs with among them, 10,000 copies of CDs with Michael Jackson’s songs.

The Malaysian culture does not instil enough awareness of the importance of respecting intellectual property in its people. Most of us buy pirated CDs because they are obviously cheap compared to originals, and we do not perceive and feel that it is wrong. Easy access to Web sites and file-sharing networks also lead to more piracy with infringement of copyrights.

Piracy affects our country’s reputation. Enforcement must be consistent and continuous, and not for just a short period of time. Educating people on the negative effects, business and social implications of piracy can help curb the problem.

Cooperation and efforts from everyone is needed to fight piracy in Malaysia.

References:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39235281,00.htm

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/7/9/nation/4283868&sec=nation

http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2007/7/25/technology/20070725115522&sec=technology