Before Netflix and other streaming services were at their peak, we could only watch movies by going to the theatres or if we had the budget, fork out a little money to get the original copy of the movie.
Those who had the guts would spend less for pirated DVDs, with only RM10 to RM15 for a movie. An original copy can go up as much as twice the price. A recent tweet by an X user, @MHaffizJ shows that the pirated days of movies and music were never gone. They’re merely hiding online and require only a small device to put the content in – a pen drive.
According to the tweet, many Malaysians are illegally selling a collection of songs online in a pen drive, with the original price set at RM12.99 before it was slashed to only RM8.99. Despite the low price, the sellers can allegedly earn up to RM200,000. Each pen drive contains a total of 56 songs and according to the screenshot of the homepage, more than 22,000 units have been sold!
That’s easy money for the illegal sellers, but also unethical.
Netizens are not happy to see this unorthodox act because it is a clear violation of the copyright act, where no content should be duplicated and re-distributed.
According to one comment from a netizen who works with the courier, he said that the USBs are selling like hotcakes.
“Unfortunately, the earnings come from an illegal source because he’s taking the rights of others without consent.”
“I’m not surprised. At the night market, some people do the same and sell only RM5 to RM10 for a pen drive with a lot of songs in it. It’s just like pirated DVDs back in those days, when they saw the authorities, they packed their stuff and ran away.”
Have you encountered sellers like this online?
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