Ethical and Legal Issues in Malaysia: Copyright, Press Freedom, Defamation

Running head: LEAGL AND ETHICAL ISSUES
Ethical and Legal Issues
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1LEAGL AND ETHICAL ISSUES
Federal Constitution 10/4
Opinion on press freedom – Article 10 of the Constitution of Malaysia states that the citizens
of Malaysia have the right to freedom of speech. In the Federal Constitution under the
mentioned article, the rules, restrictions and regulations of a Malaysian citizen have been
specified. Therefore, it can be stated that the Malaysians have these right to make use of the
freedom of speech as it has been mentioned in this particular article. Although the freedom is
kept restricted in a certain issues that include the status of the moral language. The federal
constitution also states that the citizens of Malaysia have special rights on the status of Islam
as a national religion. It can be said that this article provides freedom to the citizens of
Malaysia to some extent (Phua, Mahali & Kamlun, 2015). This is because they are imposed
with restrictions in the context of press freedom. Several existing laws help in regulating the
freedoms that have been granted as per this article. Thus, the opinion on press freedom states
that the citizens of Malaysia cannot utilize the press freedom fully since there are restrictions
on it.
Copyright – the Copyright Act 1987 that came into force on December 1, 1987 governs the
general law of copyright in Malaysia. Over the years, the law of copyright has undergone
plenty of essential amendments. Therefore, in Malaysia the protection of copyright is
accorded without any sort of procedure of deposit and registration. The concept of originality
in copyright refers to the work that should have been originated from the author and some
effort must have been provided into the creation of work. The license of copyright should be
in writing. Copyright must also consist of the architectural work when it exists in Malaysia
or any other kind of literary work incorporated in a building located near Malaysia. These
special rules are only applicable in Malaysia (Balganesh, 2016). As per the Copyright Act of
Malaysia, if the work of the author is published, it will considered to be protected in the other
Berne Union countries. All the existing musical, artistic and literary work that were published