Copyright in electronic media: islamic perspectives / Zarita Hj. Kasim

Changes occur in a society. As such any social study has to take into consideration theories of changes. While theories of relations are a part of social change theories and this results in peaceful coexistence or conflicts. These changes also include relationships between races and different religious. In line with Malaysia towards the era of Knowledge Society, the concept of multimedia or electronic media and Islam is sufficient to think of. This study was carried out on the purpose of assessing Islamic views on copyrighting which normally occurs when dealing in the field of communication media. The study focused on the information copyrighting in electronic media, either television, radio or online media such as the Internet and other networking through computers. It was conducted basically to review related literatures regarding Intellectual Property from the perspective of Islamic and conventional laws.
Furthermore, this research also gave attention to the mechanisms consist in the Syariah or the Islamic Law in terms of handling or dealing with copyright in the electronic media, especially on the on works eligible for copyright, copyright ownership, duration of copyright, legal rights of copyrights owners and copyright infringement.
Generally the methods used in this research are observation towards the earlier researches (literature review), via data collection and data analysis. Comparative analysis was also an approach to evaluate the different views among the earlier jurists or 'fuqaha' to obtain an accurate fundamental basis for the copyright law in Malaysia as an Islamic country and relevant to the current era. At the same time, there were comparative analysis between the Islamic copyright laws and the conventional copyright laws.