The providers of illegal movie streaming services may have to think again about carrying out these illegal activities. In Malaysia, the government has prepared tougher penalties.
With the amendments to the Copyright Act in Malaysia, perpetrators who offer streaming services and devices deemed to be detrimental to copyright owners can be subject to a fine of at least IDR 34 million or more, and a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
This rule also applies to companies that are involved in piracy of the streaming service or allow its presence. Unless the company can prove that they were not aware of the violation and have made efforts to block it, they could also be subject to penalties.
Almost all copyright laws in various countries actually cover digital content piracy, but some of them are only made to punish piracy that is done by downloading or uploading, not offering streaming services.
This is what happened in Malaysia, where previously the copyright law could not be used to prosecute people who sold streaming devices containing pirated content. Therefore, amendments were made to these rules.
In Indonesia, sites that provide streaming of illegal content have often been prosecuted by Kominfo. Minister Johnny G Plate also reminded that watching movies on illegal online sites such as IndoXXI has a negative impact.
One of the negative impacts is the sucking up of the bandwidth that has been provided by cellular operators. As a result, it can interfere with bandwidth requirements for more productive purposes. For example, for the need to work from home or study online at home.
The hidden dangers of watching movies on illegal online sites such as IndoXXI, LK21 and Ganool were also revealed by Cyber Observer from Media Kernels Indonesia, Ismail Fahmi. According to him, when opening the illegal streaming site there is malware that accompanies it. This malware has the opportunity to damage gadgets used to watch illegal movies.
"We also have to ask why they give it for free, what's the benefit? It turns out that they took our data. They took profit from it," said Ismail Fahmi, as quoted from CNBC Indonesia.