I thought I had spaced out for a moment when my eyes fixated on a watch shop in front of me, even though the bustling street with a beaming aroma of evening food was offering so many other feasts for the eye. I recorded with my lenses as a woman, presumably in her late 40s, slowly rolled down the shutter for the shop. Business ends early on a Sunday.

The shop sported exquisite brands, from Rolex to Swatch to Casios- and I wondered how good business would have been for them that day. Then a middle-aged man, apparently the shop owner, trotted down the only open shutter and reached for an old EX5 bike. He messed around with the old, worn out red helmet that was on the bike, and began pushing almost in slow motion at the compound of the shop.

Just when I thought he would get on the bike, usher his wife to pillion with him, and ride back to a comfortable home, he pushed the bike in reverse, and with one big push, brought the bike into the shop with him, under the one remaining open shutter. As he moved in, his wife reached out for rusty steel, and dragged down the shutter. This shop is their home.

There is nothing so poor about this image, nor anything that is so rich about it. But this is the image of Malaysia in all of its glory. Exquisitely branded at the first view, but in ground reality- this is nothing but a modest nation that loves to rests its shoulders on small comforts and mundane routines.

I have long refrained from writing anything too political, because it gets monotonous when keeping in mind my job as a reporter. Politics is poisonous for a creative mind like mine even if it forms such a major part of our lives. The circus that happens in politics insults my intelligence and is just literally stupid.

But it does get to your nerves when some dumbfounded decisions made by some self-proclaimed champions at the top brass seep into our lives and begin affecting it. The latest straw, this week, was when the government suddenly decided to be stringent with their online policies and banned some ten awfully popular downloads and files sharing sites because they infringe ‘copyrights’.

For one, I’m not one of those customers and layman looking for an easy way to lay my hands on a movie, one who is grumbling cause I can’t take shortcuts to watch excellent ripped qualities of Hollywood products anymore.

Being a future film-maker and a novelist myself, I know very well what copyrights are worth, and I would be a mad man if my products are ripped off and seeded out for free consumption- causing me to incur losses.

But the Internet revolution had started a decade ago, and I think it is more than adequate time to gauge the impact the online revolution could have on the traditional forms of finding entertainment.

But had movies gone any less profitable in the past year just because they are now available as free downloads?

If you look at the global box-office records, nine out of ten of the world’s most profitable films to date have been made in the last decade alone. Titanic is the only film in the top-ten which was made before free Internet downloads were widely available. How can that be translated into impacting a film’s success-failure ratio?

The fact is, even with such downloads at hand, films, music, books, and other copyrighted materials make more than enough money to enable Hollywood actors to buy mansions or to enable singers who had one runway hit song three or four years ago to still survive making one bad album after another.

The day when I see these actors, directors, producers, or singers visit my local bakery shop and settle for a modestly-packaged bun for breakfast the way I do- then I will believe that all these downloads are actually affecting the industry.

Copyrights is nothing but cowardly excuse from those who are looking to leech out even more money for their products than they already are doing. So millions can keep fattening their bank accounts whilst we keep increasing our expenditure budget from our meager salaries.

Yes, United States already have a system in place where they can track such illegal downloads, and Malaysian authorities will probably soon cite examples such as that in this matter.

But if you want to emulate another country, emulate them in matters that improve the welfare of the society first before you emulate matters that will just please some swaggering corporate entities who will probably cut a good deal back for the top brass.

Are we getting free healthcare, or even free education? The answer is No. Everything in Malaysia is paid for, including provided public parking spaces, and even private parking spaces. From oil to gas to food, we literally pay for everything. The government keeps telling us that the reason for this money milking is called taxes, so that they could serve us in return.

Serve us in return? Do you repair our creaking water pipe for free then? Or do you give us a free car service? Do you even provide special subsidiaries to purchase a vehicle? Do not speak of welfare when you ask us to pay income taxes, land taxes, and even road taxes.

We are already experiencing trouble getting to theatres and watching movies due to traffic jams and a whole lot of expenses that come with it. Why ban downloads? So that we would go to theatres even more often than we already are, so that we pay the inflated ticket prices that we are charged with?

Just walk in to a Speedy Video Store and you would notice that the DVD release of a new Hollywood movie costs you a staggering RM60 to RM70. Is that the amount you expect us to pay in order to get some good entertainment at the comfort of our sofas during a silent Sunday?

Malaysia’s urbane beauty is nothing but a beautiful piece of overpriced jewellery that hangs in a showcase box and hardly on someone’s neck. Look at the mushrooms of posh, ridiculously priced condominiums in Jalan Duta and other surrounding areas. How many of them are actually occupied?

Why don’t you, for once, take a ‘righteous’ action that would shake the foundations of droves of men and women who go sailing in a crystal clear ocean in Mauritius because they have nothing better to do, or those who have a ‘guest house’ in Palm Islands in Dubai, rather than keep shaking the little left of us?

Before you know it, you might be writing your own obituary as far as power and positions are concerned. Don’t tell us you haven’t been warned. Or don’t dare call us betrayers when we leave.

The matter of fact is- you are betraying the faith we have placed in you.

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