Publish a book or zine
Printing needs a licence, publishing needs a permit, and the Minister can prohibit the result outright.
What reaches you, and in what order
Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984
Act 301The 2012 amendment did not delete s.13A, which is still headed 'Minister's decision final'. What it removed were the words that had barred any court from questioning the decision at all, along with the Minister's 'absolute discretion' over licences and permits and the twelve-month expiry that forced annual renewal. A refusal, revocation or suspension can now be taken to court on ordinary administrative law grounds. Note the limits: s.13A only ever covered licence and permit decisions, and the prohibition power in s.7(1) is still expressed to be exercisable in the Minister's absolute discretion.
Copyright Act 1987
Act 332Section 27(3) requires every assignment and every licence to be in writing, exclusive or not, and a publishing deal is usually an exclusive licence. Anything you let a publisher do that is not in the written grant is not licensed.
Defamation Act 1957
Act 286Memoir, reportage and anything naming a living person. Justification and fair comment are the defences; there is no serious-harm threshold here.
Sedition Act 1948
Act 15Seditious tendency, with intention expressly irrelevant under s.3(3). That is what makes it dangerous to satire.
Penal Code
Act 574Section 298A on causing religious disharmony also reaches public imagery, and it is the heaviest of these: a minimum of two years' imprisonment, with the Criminal Procedure Code's discharge and good-behaviour-bond routes expressly shut off. Raise its constitutionality early. The Supreme Court held in Mamat bin Daud v Government of Malaysia [1988] 1 MLJ 119 that s.298A is in substance a law about religion, which is a State matter, and so beyond Parliament's power. It has never been repealed and it is still charged. Note the limit of the argument: the reasoning turns on Parliament legislating for the States, so it is at its strongest outside the Federal Territories and weakest in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan, where Parliament does legislate on State subjects.
Stamp Act 1949
Act 378Stamp within thirty days of execution. Late stamping costs you the unpaid duty plus, under s.47A, RM50 or ten per cent of the deficient duty (whichever is greater) if you fix it within three months of the deadline, and RM100 or twenty per cent (whichever is greater) after that. Since 1 January 2026 most arts agreements fall in Phase 1 of the stamp duty self-assessment system, which means you assess and pay through MyTax yourself and can be audited on it afterwards. LHDN has waived certain 2026 penalties for getting the self-assessed return wrong, but that waiver does not touch late stamping, so an old unstamped agreement is still a full-penalty problem.
Marrakesh Treaty
TreatyThe basis for the accessible-format exceptions, which is the answer when a library or a reader asks.
Income Tax Act 1967
Act 53Advances and royalties are income; the badges of trade decide the character.
Section 7 of the Printing Presses and Publications Act is the prohibition power and it has been used against books and graphic novels. Reviewability is the remedy people forget they now have.
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This page is published by ALIM (Art × Law Initiative Malaysia) as general legal information for Malaysia’s creative communities. It is not legal advice. It does not take your circumstances into account, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship with ALIM or with anyone associated with it.
The law changes. Each Act reproduced here is the Attorney General’s Chambers’ consolidated reprint and carries the date it was consolidated to; amendments made after that date do not appear in the text, and the authoritative version of any Malaysian law is the one published in the Federal Gazette. Subsidiary legislation, state enactments and local authority by-laws may also apply to your situation and are largely outside this library.
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