Cyber defamation: a critical study of the adequacy of the law in Malaysia / Mohd. Farhan Mhd. Yahkup, Shahrul Ekhsan Hasim and Zairul Izzain Ibrahim

This research covers the area of cyber defamation that occurring via the Intemet. Before the ICT developments, defamation only occurred between two parties in the real world defamation and it was covered under the law of Torts. However, with the development of information technology, now defamation can also occur in the cyberspace and it also involve not only between two parties but also the three parties such as the Internet Service Provider (ISP) as the defamatory words are publish on their sites as the medium to commit this wrongdoing. The reason why we embarked upon this research is because we want to study and analyse the law relating to cyber defamation. In this respect, we are looking at the suitability and adequacy of our Malaysian law be it the traditional law as well as the new cyber law to deal with cyber defamation. In this research, we also have examined the law in other jurisdictions such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Australia for comparison with our law on the issue of cyber defamation. From this research, we found out that under the Penal Code, the Defamation Act 1957 and the Communication & Multimedia Act 1998, it is still not adequate enough to deal with cyber defamation because there is no such provision from these Acts that mentioned about the third parties liability such as the ISP as compared to the law in those countries mentioned above. In the light of this legal inadequacy, our recommendations are that, these traditional laws such as the Penal Code and the Defamation Act 1957 should be amended in order to cover cyber defamation. As for the Communication & Multimedia Act 1998, it needs to be amended to include the third parties liability.