Peer- to-Peer

The fight against piracy is not limited at the Gulf of Aden but it also extends to the cyber world. Robin Gibb, one of the Gibb brothers from the BeeGees group are considered as best-selling music artistes is lending his voice to the fight against digital piracy. He reckons that the price of album is falling due to illegal download of the songs through the internet.

Like any other technology, P2P proved to be an ideal breeding place of disseminating illegal copies. This issue was given much publicity and scrutiny in the foreign jurisdiction. However, there is not much response or intellectual discourse on P2P in the context of Malaysian copyright law. In pursuing the objective of building an economy based on knowledge, Malaysia cannot deny that the advent of technology especially the P2P will challenge the current concept of copyright law. This new development creates legal uncertainty to the copyright owner, P2P users and providers, and Internet Service Provider.

Just a decade ago, internet users shared their files by placing URL links in their own websites. The demand to share complete albums, video clips and full length movie, the ‘traditional’ method of placing URL had become obsolete. The technology has to play catch up and come up with better file sharing platform called P2P.

The advent of P2P carries with it the same problem of disseminating illegal copies of copyright works. The disseminating of illegal copies of copyright works has a major impact to the economy, jobs, businesses, and consumers that are related to the innovation of the copyright works.