Apparently Malaysia is proposing a Computing Professionals Bill. Here's a draft of it.
An Act to provide for the establishment of the Board of Computing Professionals Malaysia and for the registration of computing practitioners, computing professionals, sole proprietorships, partnerships and bodies corporate providing Computing Services and for purposes connected therewith.
Seems like it might be ok, but will most likely result in stifling innovation, even more government censorship (via a very sneaky means), and perhaps even reduce the number of "IT professionals".
From the MetaFilter discussion:
Sometimes I have to wonder if technology isn't really just making people stupider.
No, they've always been this stupid. Technology just makes it easier to see it happening worldwide. - Celsius1414
Time for a new maxim? "Technology isn't making people stupider, it's just making the stupid more obvious."
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Any sufficiently ignorant politician in a society with advanced technology is indistinguishable from a witch-hunt participant. - Inspector.Gadget
From the Act:
- Computing
- is a goal-oriented activity to plan, architect, design, create, develop, implement, use and manage information technology or information technology systems.
- Computing Graduate
- means a person who has completed a computer science or equivalent degree programme of study.
- Computing Practitioner
- means a person who has a job function in computing or qualification in computing.
That essentially covers sitting at a computer and typing. Which I would venture a guess that pretty much anyone might do. Do they all need to be registered?
Another MetaFilter quote:
A lot of times these professional certification things are about protecting incumbents from new competition. [...] Basically incumbents will setup licensing systems to create an artificial scarcity of them so that they can keep prices high. - delmoi
A scary piece of legislation. Also, is it odd that it's in English?