Education might work, but then again ...

New Straits Times
07-20-2009
Education might work, but then again ...
Edition: Main/Lifestyle
Section: Main Section

PUTRAJAYA: When the Malaysian enforcement head in charge of optical disc piracy walked into a DVD store in Canada and asked if it had pirated copies, he got a 20-minute lecture from the salesman.

Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry enforcement division director-general Mohd Roslan Mahayudin was pleasantly surprised by the lecture against buying pirated goods.
And he hopes that in time, this will be the scenario in Malaysian DVD shops. "Education and awareness are the keys to curbing disc piracy, and we are moving towards that."

Roslan, in outlining the new approach to curb piracy, said the ministry was also going to take the smart approach with street pedlars.

"We don't want to come down hard on them from the word go. We want to engage them in talks, tell them about the consequences and win them over."

Recording Industry Association chief executive officer Tan Ngiap Foo agreed with the educational approach.

He said the public needed to be reminded and education was the best way to solve the issue.

"We should be consistent in our advocacy. The public needs to understand that they have become offenders once they buy counterfeit products."

Tan said the government should hold talks on intellectual property at schools and companies, just as in Hong Kong and the United States.

However, Karyawan president Freddie Fernandez has little faith in education, arguing that many campaigns held to educate the public in the past had failed to get the desired results.

"Artistes and other organisations have campaigned so many times before. We have even reduced the price of DVDs.

"However, the public still chose to buy pirated goods and download movies illegally. What saddened me even more was that some of them were highly educated."

Last year, the music industry lost RM91.7 million to piracy.

But if education is the way to go, then one section in the Copyright Act needs to be looked into.

A legal expert said Section 42 (2) of the Copyright Act 2000 implied that it was all right for a person to own one or two pirated DVDs, as long as they were not for sale.

"With that, the law provides for demand. This sends the wrong message if we want to create awareness among the public to stop buying illegal movie and music discs," he said.

Still, Malaysian Federation Against Copyright Theft executive director Shamsul Jafni Shafie Shamsul is optimistic that this renewed will by the ministry to curb piracy will bring results.

MFACT is the local representative for Motion Picture Association.

"Last year, we saw the mushrooming of stores and peddlers selling pirated optical discs.

"Although the situation is not as bad as it was a decade ago, the recent announcement by the minister to go after the source of these illegal activities is timely and consistent with our views."

He said the authorities needed to act quickly after receiving tip- offs.

But for the future, Shamsul has other issues to worry about, like Internet piracy.

"Because the availability of broadband speed is not as good as in Japan or South Korea, the problem here is under control.

"But in time and with the speed of broadband getting better, traditional hard-goods piracy may move to the Internet where illegal and pirated movies will be made available for streaming or download."

He said more and more pirated optical discs in the market were still being "burnt", although most of them were being churned out using replicating machines.

"In a way, by using these multiple-stack lab burners, it is easy for the illegal producers to hide their tracks.

"When they know that the enforcement is on their trail, they can just take the burners, put them in their vans and run. They can't do this with bulky machines."

(Copyright 2009)