Legal

Legislation

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission was created pursuant to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission Act (1998) as a new regulator for the communications and multimedia industry in Malaysia. At the same time, the Communications and Multimedia Act (1998) was passed, to fulfill the need to regulate an increasingly convergent communications and multimedia industry.

The Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 is based on the basic principles of transparency and clarity; more competition and less regulation; flexibility; bias towards generic rules; regulatory forbearance; emphasis on process rather than content; administrative and sector transparency; and industry self-regulation.

The Act seeks to provide a generic set of regulatory provisions based on generic definitions of market and service activities and services. The jurisdiction of this Act is restricted to networked services and activities only.

In Malaysia, MCMC is responsible for administration of the Postal Services Act, which governs postal and courier services via the powers given under the Postal Services Act 2012 (PSA 2012). The PSA 2012 is a transformative postal legislation to deal with the postal challenges of the 21st century. The PSA 2012 repeals PSA 1991 and makes new provisions to better regulate the postal service industry in a multi-player environment, promote orderly development of the industry and safeguard universal service provisioning. The PSA 2012 applies best regulatory practices such as transparent licensing system, adaptive universal service provisioning based on changing customers’ needs, promotion of healthy and fair competition as well as principle of self-regulation.

The Digital Signature Act 1997 (DSA 1997) came into force on 1 October 1998, to regulate the use of digital signature and to provide for additional matters connected to its use in Malaysia. This DSA 1997 facilitates e-business and e-commerce activities by using the digital signature instead of a conventional handwritten signature in legal and commercial transactions. Further, under Digital Signature Regulations 1998 also sets out a mandatory licensing scheme for CA (being the issuers of digital certificates), recognised repositories and recognised date/time stamp authority.
 

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