Today, the Minister of Communications and Multimedia, Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah announced in regards to film productions, the official media agencies or indie media groups must apply for a license in Malaysia before shooting. While many are speculating that this is to prevent the future Al-Jazeera-like controversies, this can also be seen to be in line with the SOPs regulations, as well as under the National Film Development Corporation (Finas) Act since we are in the midst of recovering from the pandemic.
With the likes of local talents such as JinnyBoi TV and Macam Yes Studios, they would probably need to apply for the Film Production License and Film Shooting Certificate (SPP) which makes sense. However, Datuk Saifuddin's statement is quite confusing as he also included "personal media" and "social media platforms". Does this mean that every Malaysian who does Facebook, Insta-stories, YouTube and TikTok videos need to apply for the license? So many questions!
Obviously, this was brought up during the conference. When asked about the definition of "film" and how would this affect social media users, Saifuddin simply replied that - films, short films, trailers, advertising “filmlets” and any recording on the material of any kind, including videotapes and video discs of moving images, accompanied or unaccompanied by sound, and documentaries, for the viewing of the public. Geez, this is still pretty unclear, to be honest.
In regards to that, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Malaysia (FCCM) were not aware of the need to obtain the license from Finas and this just happened yesterday. We think the government will probably need to come up with a proper guideline for this as we also make videos on our platform too. What do you think of this? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more trending tech news at TechNave.com.
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