Category: Liberty

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Economics Liberty

[686] Of levy on CD-R

I had wanted to blog about the Music Council of Malaysia’s call for a levy on blank CD-R earlier. For some reason however, it slipped off my mind. Thanks to an article in The Star today, it came back to me. I think, if you’ve been reading enough of my stuff, you know what I’ve to say. For those that don’t, I’m don’t share the same table with the Music Council.

The Music Council, according to an article in The Star, states that:

…it had asked for the levy because it is concerned over the loss in revenue to the music industry whenever customers make copies of music CDs (see In.Tech, Dec 8). It believes that two out of three CD-Rs sold in the country are used for copying audio-visual material.

The Recording Industry Association of Malaysia claimed that such ‘home recordings’ are a serious problem for the industry.

The nature of the issue is almost similar to protectionism. Yet, this case isn’t quite about competition because the music and CD-R aren’t very comparable. But the bottomline is, an industry is trying to make their product relatively more competitive to some other good not by increasing the quality of their good but instead by forcing the other good’s cost to go up. In the end, it’s nothing more than an interest group with protectionism in mind.

Earlier, Malaysian telcos dealers and distributors have requested the certain Malaysian authority to restrict competition because competition hurts their profit.

By saying that I disagree with the levy, I’m not saying I accept piracy. Duplicating copyrighted media without permission, as much as I hate to admit it, is plain stealing. Still, accussing everybody that uses CD-R is involved in piracy is unfair. Imposing blanket levy is even more unfair.

What the music industry needs is a stronger anti-piracy enforcement, not protectionism. In fact, I’d rather see stakeholders in the music industry to initiate legal actions against those involved in piracy, like what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been doing against illegal file sharers for the past few years in the US. Legal actions won’t introduce market frictions, unlike levying. At least in the long term.

p/s – for the whole morning, I couldn’t access my own site. I couldn’t access a few other sites like Screenshots either.

pp/s – turned out it wasn’t just me. There was a network outage near Putrajaya yesterday. (via)

Categories
Liberty Politics & government

[684] Of I’m glad she’s a Malay

When Malaysian lock-up detainee abuse scandal first came to surface, especially when a video of it was made public, I noticed a number of people tried to associate the scandal with discrimination and, ultimately, racism. Moreover, some tried to manipulate some sort of chauvinistic communal nationalism. I wholly disagree with the association; correlation does not imply causation is an apt phrase.

To me, this issue concerns neither ethnicity nor nationality. It’s simply about persons being abused. No more than that. Nevertheless, the apparent fact at that time didn’t help my case since, previously, all the abused detainees seemed disporportionately Chinese Malaysian and Chinese from People’s Republic of China. Hence, I must say, I’m relieved with the revelation that the abused detainee in the video that was forced to strip and squat by a Malaysian police officer was not a Chinese from PRC but in fact, is a Malay Malaysian.

That disclosure vindicates my stance that there was no racism involved. This piece of information should render those that expounded that the scandal was tainted with discrimination and racism to sit in a corner and sulk. It proves that they’re wrong. More importantly, it cleanly undoes those racist opportunists’ crude works that tried to fire up communal feeling.

Of course, because my take is that ethnicity doesn’t matter, the fact that the victim’s a Malay shouldn’t make the issue any less angering as it should be. But it does and it does because of the existence of those that always try to transpose every issue as communal issues. These people cry of discrimination while they, deep within themselves are racists. Without them, the fact that the victim’s a Malay wouldn’t comfort me by one bit.

Malaysian society is young when compared to many others. While we grow up, we need to realize that not everything is about discrimination and racism. At the same time, racists don’t work in the open. They’re among us, trying to cry “Discrimination!” or any other word in similar context even when it’s not. Whenever we overhear somebody cries that, we must to ask ourselves, is it really about discrimination or racism or is someone trying to manipulate Malaysian complicated racial politics?

The ability to discern the two possibilities is paramount if we as Malaysians hope not to see the current Australian race riot to replicate itself in Malaysia as our second May 13 Incident.

Categories
Conflict & disaster Economics Liberty Politics & government

[679:448] Of negative real interest rate?

Apart from Bucking the Fuckeyes, something odd came across my mind earlier.

If Malaysian nominal interest rate currently hovers around 2.7% according to Bank Negara (Interbank interest rate), as it has been for many months now while inflation for October is around 3.2% according to Business Times, then wouldn’t that mean, according to Fisher equation, Malaysia had a negative real interest rate a few weeks ago?

Something is wrong here. Am I taking the right interest rate?

Base lending rate (BLR) however is 6%, according to Maybank while ABN Amro Malaysia offers 5.5%. If BLR is the benchmark, then it’s my mistake.

Nonetheless, if indeed Malaysia had a negative real rate just a month ago, then our current capital outflow might not entirely due to the current huge rate differential between the US dollar and the Malaysian ringgit.

p/s – dirty Republicans at work. But nothing less than an ingenious political maneuvering:

House GOP Seeks Quick Veto of Iraq Pullout

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – House Republicans maneuvered for swift rejection Friday of any notion of immediately pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, sparking a nasty, sometimes personal debate over the war following a Democratic lawmaker’s own call for withdrawal.

Just a day after Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., stoked a surging political fire over President Bush’s Iraq policies by proposing that troops return home now, Republicans brought a measure to the House floor urging that a pullout begin immediately.

The symbolic vote was intended to fail, and furious Democrats accused the GOP of orchestrating a political stunt.

Republicans’ call for vote for an immediate withdrawal of US troop from Iraq forces Democrats into a corner with no safe way to go.

Categories
Activism Liberty

[654] Of Anwar Ibrahim at Michigan III

After corresponding with a person inside Malaysian students’ association at Michigan, apparently, the issue had arisen due to unfortunate misunderstanding.

The warning from Malaysian Student Department (MSD) was issued way back in January 2005. Somebody re-forwarded it later – what seems to be in conjunction of Anwar Ibrahim’s lecture – to the Malaysian students’ association at Michigan. Hence, neither MSD nor the Malaysian government had issued a warning directly related to the lecture.

Earlier, I had planned to write several letters of protest to some quarters. With the new development however, the need to write them has evaporated.

Still, the letter that was issued by MSD is an act of hypocrisy and it’s good to know that the person that I corresponded with feels that the letter is unjustified in any way. Moreover, the person assures me that the association hadn’t barred nor spied on any Malaysian at Michigan that attended the lecture.

Categories
Activism Liberty

[653] Of Anwar Ibrahim at Michigan II

I sent an email to Jeff Ooi about Anwar Ibrahim’s lecture . Mr. Ooi has kindly and willingly highlighted the issue.

With that, at least two more mails need to fly. In my list are Michigan Student Assembly and the Office of the President. Maybe, a CC to the Michigan Daily and Michigan Independent will do the trick too.

If you disagree at how Malaysian Student Department (MSD) at Chicago is handling the matter, please send a short letter of protest to the Student Assembly and the University President.

For representatives in the Assembly, their emails can be found at this page. Alternatively, send your protest to msa[dot]reps[at]umich[dot]edu. For the President, her office email is presoff[at]umich[dot]edu. Replace [at] with “@” and [dot] with “.”.

Don’t forget to give MSD Chicago a visit and give them a piece of your mind.

Be a good citizen. Email these people and assert pressure against MSD Chicago. The time for indifference has come and gone.

For more information, read [672] Of Anwar Ibrahim at Michigan and [670] Of hypocrisy in Malaysian policy.