KUALA LUMPUR: On the sidelines of a major telecommunications conference in Malaysia, government officials told Bikyamasr.com that they are looking at ways to battle against digital spam and online piracy as they push forward on developing the country's IT sector further. Officials said that the Information, Communications and Culture ministries were “building a network with several influential countries to step up cooperation in the battle against spam.” The official, who was speaking on behalf of Information, Communications and Culture Minister Rais Yatim said the matter “is important as it involved the question of security as well as the integrity of telecommunication network.” Spam refers to unsolicited email or junk mail which could result in compromising private information on the Internet. They also said that it is part of the rise of the global digital piracy that has hit a number of countries hard in recent years. The minister said data showed that at the moment there were more than 183 billion spam emails on the Internet throughout the world daily and according to him, “if the global community did not give serious attention to this nuisance on the Internet, spam would continue to plague the Internet.” “In Malaysia, we are also exposed to spam which affects the integrity of the Internet,” he told reporters after attending one of the sessions at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Rais said Malaysia was hoping the issue of spam would be featured in many international conferences for discussion and sought consensus in formulating solutions. “Nonetheless, if these conferences fail to highlight spam and security, the question of Internet integrity would still not resolved, and as a sovereign country, Malaysia would defend itself from such foreign intrusions as we have our own laws which could be enforced,” he said. He gave the example of the enforcement of various acts relating to communications, multimedia and computer errors, to manage security and integrity breaches on the Internet. “We are here to gather consensus with countries sharing the same sentiments on the matter,” he said. When asked if there were consensus with various countries on the issue of security and spam, Rais said it was too early to make any conclusion. He said the involvement of Malaysia in WCIT was a preliminary effort to register the views of countries on spam and security and according to him, the conclusion would only be highlighted in the final conference document after being reviewed by all parties concerned. “But I am confident the matter (spam) would eventually become a pressing issue in many countries,” he said.
