Amending Finas Act 1981 is an opportunity for Saifuddin to show that he is a serious reformer

Let’s take a throwback to when the Finas Act was enacted. It was 1981. There was no Internet. We only had two TV stations – RTM1 and RTM2. We had to line up for public phones. Almost forty years on, we remain governed by such a legal framework. With such an awareness, it would come almost naturally to any observer that given we exist in an entirely different media landscape, modernizing such an act would be a no-brainer. While this may be true, my time as a Federal Counsel reminded me that legal reforms have always been a tough cookie to crack.

We have arrived at one such opportunity for reform, stemming from the buzz surrounding the Al Jazeera documentary – ‘Locked Up in Malaysia’. Following government scrutiny over the production and broadcast of the show, lawmakers decided to bring this case up in Parliament. On July 23, DAP’s YB Wong Shu Qi had asked the Minister of Communications and Multimedia Saifuddin Abdullah to state if it is compulsory for all those who make films to apply for Finas licenses. Making reference to the Finas Act 1981, he said – “film producers are required to apply for a Film Production Licence and a Film Shooting Certificate, whether they are mainstream media agencies or personal media showing the film on social media platform or traditional channels”.