Malaysia Says Piracy (Might Be) OK for Learning

mkbz writes "a Malaysian newspaper published a story quoting Malaysia's Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, who condemned the use of pirated software for business, but also said they may turn a blind eye to piracy when it comes to education: "But for educational purposes and to encourage computer usage, we may consider allowing schools and social organisations to use pirated software." is learning more important than copyright enforcement? could each of the pirated works found in schools be written off as donations? how can this benefit both the people AND the software makers? Read the full article here."

Comments

Educational use only

[SeanTobin]

WARNING:

All files contained in this ftp are for EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY and must be deleted within 24 hours. No members of any law enforcement or governmental agency or anyone affiliated with stated agencies are allowed, and you must disconnect now.

What a lame concept!

[frovingslosh]

Piracy is OK if it's done by a school! How lame. And the first response I saw was someone saying indeed it was OK because he had done it !

What crap! I understand that many people don't like Microsoft and are glad to screw them, but as a legal principal this makes no sense at all. What if you are a small company making educational software? How would you feel to suddenly hear governments discuss that maybe it was perfectly OK for your customers to steal your product?

Here's a more reasonable solution: Catch a big monopoly misusing their monopoly in the market with abuses that are clearly illegal, prove it in a trial, and rather than letting the monopoly choose their own punishment or threaten to break them into two monopolies, nationalize the bastards! Then you could give that software to any schools you want and still not muck with the copyright laws. The income could be used to lower taxes, and the extra layers of government mismanagement would help ensure that the smaller companies could compete!