Under the Multimedia Act 1998, the authorities have legal obligation to persecute individuals who spread or share images found to be indecent or violate any persons rights that discriminates, found guilty the law can impose a fine of RM50,000 or 1 year in prison or both.

Reminding the public on the Act, MCMC has issued a statement with regards to the Gemas incident in Johor, where a secondary school student in year 2 was killed after the blade of a grass cutting tractor in the school compound severed the students head splitting it in half. Some unscrupulous bystanders who took pictures of the deceased and shared the images on social messaging platforms.

Such an act completely questions the morality and unethical behaviour of society who are engrossed on sensational news, upping one after the other.  Its been a common scene with social apps like Whatsapp, where extreme images of road victims and morbid pictures of corpse are shared without much reservation where once considered taboo.

It is for this reason authorities, watchdogs, and regulatory bodies are needed to monitor the unbridled spread of information as its clear our society has a problem with information overload and grappling with .