E-Book and Copyright Protection in Malaysia

摘要

Copyright law is that branch of Intellectual Property law that protects the proprietary rights of the authors in relation to their created works. The rationale of the copyright protection appears to be two-fold ie. To encourage the progress in the arts and science for the benefit of the public and secondly to secure a fair return for the creators of works so as to ensure continued creativity. Then a new way of distributing information came about such as the computers and networks. The advantage of digital information technology is that it facilitates copying and manipulating information, including software, musical recordings and books. Readers who made use of their computers to share published information were technically copyright infringers. This paper will analyze the current Copyright Act 1987 in Malaysia and the legislative changes in 1996, 1997 and 2000 and the existing copyright protection for the authors having regard to the creation of ebooks whereby the control over the publishers rights are hampered by the creation of this powerful technology tools. With the electronic link which makes it possible to download new text onto apparently printed piece of paper, even newspaper could become ephemeral. The issues of pros and cons of e-book will be discussed and also to look into the suggestion and recommendation to cover their protection for the authors. The social implications in Malaysia will be addressed pertaining to e-book in this paper. Lastly, where do the authors and bookstores in Malaysia stand at the current e-book technology.