This individual assignment required student to based on the government policies of one country and critically evaluate the effects of the chosen government policies relating to the use of digital technology.
The country policies chosen are Malaysia intellectual property and cyber law. Intellectual property protection Malaysia comprises of patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright, geographical indications and layout designs of integrated circuits. Intellectual property laws are numerous and varied, but the purpose behind them is simple is to protect the rights of authors, inventors and businesses while encouraging risk and innovation that benefit the public.
For cyber law, there are currently four types which have been approved by the Malaysia government which is known as Digital Signature Act 1997, Computer Crimes Act 1997, Telemedicine Act 1997 and Communication and Multimedia Act 1998. The exists of cyber law is because Internet has created a lot of general interests in communications, technology and entrepreneurial ventures and everyone in the world is highly dependent on it, but at the same time computer become harmful that spreading virus, us as a weapon, that commit crime.
Overall, I will focus on Copyright Act 1987and Computer Crimes Act 1997, which analysis the legal, ethical and economic viewpoint. Besides that, evaluate the global impact, local impact and impact on society.
2.0 Analysis
2.1 Explanation on intellectual property policy
The government policies of Intellectual property protection Malaysia comprises of patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright, geographical indications and layout designs of integrated circuits. Intellectual property (IP) is referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for a set of exclusive rights that are recognized and the corresponding to fields of law.
According to MIDA (Malaysian Industrial Development Authority) Malaysia is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and a signatory to the Paris Convention and Berne Convention which govern these intellectual property rights, also a signatory to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) signed under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Besides that, Malaysia provides adequate protection to both local and foreign investors that are conformance with international standards.
According to NITC the objectives of the Policy are to establish a common framework to regulate the ownership and management of Intellectual Property from the creation, protection, innovation, exploitation and technology transfer activities carried out by the Relevant Body, second, is to promote and facilitate the protection of Intellectual Property in line with the National Intellectual Property Policy; and lastly is to promote and facilitate the exploitation and commercialization of Intellectual Property generated from projects funded by the Government of Malaysia.
For the form of digital technology, the law that will be use is copyright act and layout design.
The Copyright Act 1987 provides comprehensive protection for copyrightable works which includes computer programs. Copyright protection is for 50 years after the works are first published or made. To establish copyright, there are two ways. First way is go to the http://www.myipo.gov.my/) section and by clicking IP online filling, sign in or register for a new account if you do not have one, fill out the copyright holder information, submit payment via credit card and lastly upload the work in a electronic format. Another way is go to the MyIPO headquarters which is in Bangsar Utama 1.
Layout Designs of Integrated Circuits Act 2000 provides for the protection of layout designs of integrated circuits based on originality, creator's own invention and the fact that the creation is freely created. The duration of protection is 10 to 15 years from the date of its commercial exploitation.
2.2 Ethical
Currently many people trades on the internet and do not bother to check if they are buying legal copies of the product especially youngest. This usually happens to e-Books and software programs. Downloading any kind of software from an unauthorized website is a copyright infringement but people may fall for the low prices and think it is legal to buy. With the intellectual property, there will be a law to protect the seller and buyer. If the document or file does not carry anything with it, then it is possible that it can be stolen.
Besides that, many teachers or lecturers copied materials and online article using them for their students. But teachers and lecturer are not making money. Besides that, it doesn't look like anyone ever gets caught and brings many benefits to the students.
Plagiarism is using someone work without their permission, and as your own. But it's fine to refer from other people's work in your own. If you're read a book or doing assignment, you are allowed to quote from other works so long as you acknowledge and citation the sources fully, the assignment or review consists mostly of your own work and the quotes are only a small part of it.
2.3 Economic
Things that are traded on the Internet must be protected, using technological security systems and IP laws, otherwise it can be easily stolen or pirated and whole businesses can be destroyed. This is because technology growth rapidly and so many different technologies are required to create a product. So many companies often choose to outsource the development of some components and share technologies through licensing arrangements, because, if every company had to develop and produce all new the technological aspects of its products independently, the development of high-tech products would be very difficult. The economics of e-commerce depends on companies working together to share, through licensing, the opportunities and risks of business. For an example, Intel is from United States and it provide a license to Malaysia to start up the business that the company name as Intel MSC Sdn Bhd, and it share and bring in the technology to Malaysia.
2.4 Legal
According to (Schroeder and Siegfried P.A), protecting intellectual property (IP) in software presents some unique issues. Businesses are used to thinking in terms of copyright and patent, but conditions in the industry demand some additional considerations. For an example, programmers change jobs to other companies that have better offers. What happens when they leave, the programmer knows the algorithms, and may be tempted to use what he or she knows for another company. Furthermore, programmers are also often hired on a temporary basis, as contractors. If they develop software while working for a company, questions may arise as regarding the true ownership of the source code. Besides that, many companies are with partnership, when the project is finished, who will own the end products or their parts.
Currently, there was peer to peer known as P2P file sharing protocols, such as Bit Torrent, pirate bay, it share all the copyright product, such as movie, songs and software like Microsoft and so on. But is it legal for file sharing. And pirate bay website exists in 2004, yet the pirate copies still have not been ban by the government for some of the country.
3.0 Critical evaluation
3.1 Local impact
Due to the law of intellectual property, it covers of patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright, geographical indications and layout designs. For ICT sector, the act of the copyright and layout designs is important.
By creating copyright law is one way that creators make a living. That the ownership of intellectual property allows them to enjoy exclusive rights to the material and sell it for various purposes. Furthermore, it gain trust to investor, which they will invest to the country, example like Microsoft.
When foreign investor came in with a high tech program to Malaysia, company in Malaysia will have to share technologies through licensing arrangements, but at the same time, the company need to pay a lot of money to the investor. In another way it also benefit to our country because, if every company had to develop and produce all new the technological aspects of its products independently, the development of high-tech products would be very difficult. The economics of e-commerce depends on companies working together to share, through licensing, the opportunities and risks of business.
3.2 Impact on society
Copyright is found everywhere. But still, most people know very little about it. Basically, intellectual property does help a lot in current technologies. People do know what happen to them if they use pirated software and download illegally. So, people do not simply use pirated software, especially for people who are doing business. Once get caught, the business need to be shut down if find out there is copyright infringement.
At the same time, many people in the country do suffer from buying the original software, due to the price of the software is very expensive for some of the people. For an example, Microsoft Office Home and Student already cost for US $150 dollar and when it covert to Malaysia ringgit it will cost around RM400. For a student, they need to use word to write up all the assignment. But, there is always another way which the student is able to use open source program like Java. But then, not all the software has an open source program.
Current trend, people like to write something on website and giving away content to show and someone might want to copy, and with the law of intellectual property, it makes sense to add "All rights reserved" with the copyright notice, and this will be a reminder to other people that this is a copyrighted material and they do not have a right to copy it or distribute it.
3.3 Global impact
Intellectual property is very important to the growth of both developing and established economies around the world. Strong protection of intellectual property encourages creativity and innovation by local and foreign parties' example like film, software and brand identification can all be protected by intellectual property laws. It is easier for businesses to disperse their products when they are protected from illegal duplication of those products. With the law exists, although the software is in Malaysia, but it is still protect with the law of copyright all around the world, which the creator do not worry about if the software go overseas will be copy by others. Furthermore, it brings up the world economic; picture below shows the foreign direct investment (FDI) growth of the world in 1990 to 2004.
Global FDI Flows, 1990-2004
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/njtip/v5/n3/3/
4.0 Analysis
4.1 Explanation on Cyber law policy
There are currently four types of cyber laws which have been approved by the Malaysia government which is known as Digital Signature Act 1997, Computer Crimes Act 1997, Telemedicine Act 1997 and Communication and Multimedia Act 1998.
Communication and Telecommunication Act 1998 is to ensure that the information is secure, network safety, reliable and the service is affordable over Malaysia. It is to ensure the level of the user's confidence in ICT industry. Reasons of this act exist is to convergence the telecommunications, broadcasting, computing and content.
Computer Crimes Act 1997 is use to protect against the misuses of computers and computer criminal activities. Such as unauthorized use of program, illegal transmission of data and messages over computers and hacking and cracking of computer systems and networks. With this law, computer users able to protect their rights to privacy and build trust in the computer system. Besides that, government able to track the illegal activities, to reduce the cyber crimes cases.
Digital Signature Act 1997 is used to protect computer user who use electronic communications on the Internet. This is to verify the identity of a person using encryption techniques to protect against e-mail forgery. The encrypted code consists of the user's name and a hash of all the parts of the message. Reason of this act exist is because transactions conducted via the Internet are increasing, and this is to remove doubt and the possibility of fraud when conducting transactions online.
4.2 Ethical
Current trend, many kids and teenagers like to look for entertainment and unaware of the consequences. Furthermore, due to the great amount of information available in the internet Cybercrime can be easily conducted from anyone and everywhere. According to suftnetkids, it takes not more than 5 minutes using an Internet search engine to find a tutorial guideline of how to write a virus for a 15 year old kid. For such cases, should the judge brings legal action to the person that takes and circulates a virus posted on a web page or the person who initially posted the source code for this causing harm program.
4.3 Economic
Computer crime is so common that many huge computer software companies have evolved to ensure computer users that their computers remain an immune condition to the threats of hacking, phishing, copyright infringement, and child pornography and malware software-related criminal behavior. And this may be a good opportunities, that many antivirus/anti-malware systems are offered simultaneously with the purchase of any computer and operating system. According to a new joint report from the UK Government and industry, cybercrime costs the UK economy £27 billion a year.
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/
4.4 Legal
The Department of Justice categorizes computer crime in three ways: first of it is the computer as a target which attacks the computers of others like spreading virus. Secondly, the computer us as a weapon, that commit crime in the physical world such as fraud or illegal gambling. Third, the computer us as an accessory, that store illegal or stolen information. With this law establish, person who break the law will face punishment. Table below shows the punishment face to those people who break the law of computer crimes.
http://www.mampu.gov.my/mampu/pdf/MyMIS/chapter5.PDF
5.0 Critical evaluation
5.1 Impact on society
The most projecting part of the defensive measure is to spread the word about cyber crime to internet users. The most important objective of the law is to make more and more people aware of the deadly circumstances. With the spread of awareness about the cyber crime among users, the criminals are left helpless and cannot perform any action the people in the cyber world anymore and the IT core teams, which give information about cyber crimes, are always at the service of the citizens and ready to help. The citizens should get together to fight against the cyber crimes, so that the people in the cyber world can get rid of the cyber criminals. Microsoft Security Center director Mike Reavey stated that, "The attacks are getting more complex, and if we want to get ahead of attackers the call is to work together in a community approach."
Computer crimes encompass a wide variety of activities that can affect anyone. Fraud can be committed by using the computer and takes place when an individual destroys, deletes, or alters data of a sensitive nature, such as anything that causes loss of property or freedom, with the cyber law establish, it will protect the user.
5.2 Global impact
According to the Congressional Research Service, several computer security consulting firms has estimate that the global financial losses from viruses' attacks and other hostile computer-based attacks to be between $13 and $226 billion. If without the cyber law exists, the problem will continue nonstop. Throughout this problem, insurance companies now sell cyber-crime insurance and other identity-theft protection for consumers as well as corporations in an effort to raise confidence and effectively manage the damage caused by cyber criminals. Besides that, there will be more job opportunities are opening up for computer security experts in the IT industry to combat this issue. The purpose of cyber law is to bring down the cyber crime for all around the world, which the internet is throughout all around the world.
5.3 Local impact
Cyber space is a virtual space that is very important as real space for business, politics, and communities. According to National ICT security (NISER), Malaysia Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as reflected by the investment in the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) and its increases the dependency on cyber space. However, this dependency places Malaysia is still in an insecure position because cyber space is vulnerable to borderless cyber attacks. The applicability and effectiveness of existing computer crimes laws need to be constantly reviewed to face the risks coming from the cyber world.
Computer crimes law assist in cyber forensics and analysis such as analyzing evidence and providing expert witnesses for relevant cases. In order for enforcement agencies to fulfill their roles, they require processes, role players, technical support and specialist centers to aid in analyzing and solving technical problems to help the judicial process.
According to cyber security Malaysia (MOSTI) in the year of 2010, they handled a total of 2,123 incidents, more than 100 per cent increase compared with 2007.
6.0 Conclusion
For the experience of doing the assignment, I have study the objective of the policy and the purpose of the policy exists and if without laws in digital technology the world would be chaos all over. People would be able to do whatever they wanted to, they share the entire pirate software, and may be on that time there is no more inventor because there are no protection.
In my opinion, copyright sometimes slow down in the way of developing powerful technologies from creating, the biggest effect of IT is about creative idea, somehow we need to copy to get a better creative effect of IT. This is not to say that copying doesn't matter, is just that as a reference.
Besides that, the current laws in Malaysia need to be change is because people are stealing large amounts of intellectual property in the form of music and movies, and this has become a culture of the new generations of internet surfing, peer to peer downloading and hacking. But, it is difficult for the law to change that it works with the Internet, because law need to be approved by people. IP is a need of part for the digital culture and digital creativity, but the way enforcing it is wrong currently, because people are trying to take advantage of the law, which is difficult to cope with the technological advances.
Furthermore, the policy is implemented, but people do not practice it, we can see that there are still many pirated software available all around us and some people are buying from it, and mostly can be found in those IT software shop, although the government have arrest and stop them from doing it. We should not buy the product and support them, and on the other way we should spread of awareness about the crime among users, the criminals are left helpless and cannot perform any action anymore.
