Singapore: Malaysia Closing the Doors on Piracy

Fewer exits in factories producing CDs and VCDs to fight piracy?

So suggests Malaysian Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, as recently reported in the local press. The proposed new measure would give music and video pirates less time to destroy bootleg CDs and VCDs during raids on factories churning out pirated copies.

Tan Sri Muhyiddin said that a final decision would be made after further discussions with local authorities.

Although the crackdown by the Malaysian authorities had crippled several syndicates recently, he admitted that the piracy problem is "much bigger than initially thought" and announced new measures to stem the rampant tide, which include:

• New regulations that would require all factories buying machines for CD and VCD-production to obtain permits from the Customs Department and the International Trade and Industry Ministry. The authorities will determine where these machines are placed in the factories. The factories will also have to obtain approval before they destroy any discs.
   
• Factories licensed to produce such discs would be closely monitored to prevent them from churning out illegal copies.
   
• More officers would be deployed to raid errant factories.
   

The ministry is also considering tightening licensing laws and clamping down harder on traders of pirated discs. The latter would mean arresting repeat offenders on the spot and investigating their ties with syndicates, instead of simply confiscating the pirated CDs and VCDs, allowing offenders to be back on the street the very next day.

The piracy menace has been a major bugbear of the Malaysian authorities. They have reportedly conducted more than 10,000 raids in the first half of this year and seized about RM19 million worth of pirated discs.

It remains to seen if their latest bid to stamp out piracy would finally nip the problem in the bud.