Review: Piracy in Malaysia

Fighting through Education and Enforcement

Do you know that Malaysia is remaining on the US Trade Representative (USTR) piracy watch list that recommended by International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) since year 2001?
The USTR “grades” a country according to its level of Intellectual Property law and enforcement. According to the IIPA’s report on piracy, Malaysian business software piracy is up to point 61%, it is terrible figure!

Currently, the most important thing is to find a way on how to reduce the percentage of the software piracy to the world average of 35%.

After reading this blog, I able to found that Malaysian government have recognized 2 approaches -Enforcement (Ops Tulen) and Education (Sikap Tulen) to solve this issue.
Enforcement is continuous raiding companies that use illegal software as well as the illegal vendors selling the pirated software.
Education is to educate the relevant groups on the important of respecting Intellectual Property and stay away from pirated software. Those targeted groups are professionals, companies, public and IT malls.

As we know, software piracy in the workplace is a criminal offence, under the Corporate Act 1997, if a business is found with illegal copies of software, as well as its directors, senior management may face criminal prosecution. Those found guilty would be fined between RM 2000 and RM 20,000 for each infringing copy of software or sentenced up to 5 years jail or both. Even there is a serious penalty for those people using piracy software, still many companies are using pirated software in their business despite the government’s fight against software piracy.
In my opinion, it is impossible to change people mindset overnight, therefore Malaysian government still have to continue with the Sikap Tulen campaign and add more element to that campaign to educate consumer about IP.

The mix of education and enforcement surely can bring down the country in its fight against IP infringement. Dear friends, Business Software Alliance have rewarding all informants with up to RM 20,000. If you have any information can call the hotline at 1800-887-800 or log on to www.bsa.org/malaysia.