Movie piracy has been a culture in Malaysia for about a decade. It all started when MPEG cards were made available in the mid-1990s, enabling computers those days to play MPEG-1 digital video. With that, came movies and music videos on VCDs, which is based on MPEG-1 standard. Newer computers later on are capable of playing video without even requiring MPEG cards.

Then came the demand for cheaper pirated VCDs. Those days, a piece of pirated VCD would cost around RM20. Renting of pirated movies on VCDs became popular, especially among college and university students. Everyone got to rent a pirated movie at the cost of only RM1.

However, as price of VCDs dropped to as low as RM5, the renting culture is replaced with purchase culture. Many stalls selling VCDs, and now DVDs as well, were set up in pasar malams (night markets), road sides, walkways of shop houses and etc. Enforcement officers of local authorities, police and officers from the Domestic Trade & Consumer Affairs Ministry frequently conducted raids on the pirated movie sellers. However, it failed to stop them from operating.

The modus operandi changed when the authorities conducted more raids. Many of the pirated movie sellers gone mobile, carrying a bag walking around food courts, restaurants and mamak stalls approaching people having their dinner and supper to get the latest movies, including those that has not been released in cinemas.

With the wide availability of broadband Internet services in Malaysia, many Internet users resorted to P2P (peer-to-peer) networks to download pirated movie files from other P2P users worldwide and share them. This has been the cause of slow connectivity among broadband Internet users, particularly subscribers of TMNet Streamyx ADSL services. It is said that 80% of the subscribers resorted to downloading movies and music files via P2P, clogging up the international link bandwidth resulting in slow access to websites located outside of Malaysia.

E-commerce even went into action. Recently, three people including a woman was charged in a court in Penang for selling pirated DVDs to the international market over the Internet. The trio pleaded not guilty and are now awaiting trial. The woman allegedly involved in the crime is an IT expert who represented her university in a Microsoft competition a couple of years ago.

Why should we resort to watching pirated movies? Aren’t there video shops such as Speedy and Movie Magic selling licensed movies on VCDs and DVDs? Aren’t there shops providing rental of movies (original, of course)? Aren’t there cinemas such as Golden Screen Cinemas, Tanjong Golden Village and Cathay around especially in the Klang Valley, Penang and Johor Bahru? While purchasing original VCDs or DVDs can be expensive, why not rent it from movie rental shops? Why not watch it in the cinema on Wednesday where movie tickets are usually sold between RM6 - RM7?

If everyone of us resort to watching movies from the proper source, there will be no demand for pirated copies and it will cripple their business of crime. Well, I wonder when will that happen here.