Downloaders Beware

or those of you who happily torrent stuff, you'd better start being careful. Seems like our 'friendly' Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry will be cracking down on such activities pretty soon. Considering that pirated software vendors have are almost non-existent in our regular IT centres, it's not really surprising that downloaders were next on the list.

According to the report from The Star, If you download material illegally from the Internet, you can be fined a minimum of RM250,000 while the maximum fine is RM500,000. Actually this penalty was legislated more than 10 years ago under the Copyright Act, but it has yet to be fully enforced.

According to Deputy Minister Datuk S. Veerasingam, cracking down on Internet download offenders was also gaining momentum. If the government is start to get serious about it, we might start hearing the first charges to be filed against downloaders in the next couple of months. It'll be interesting to see what happens then.