Indonesia Form a New Directorate for Investigation of Copyright Infringement

Director General of Intellectual Property Rights of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights said on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 in Medan, North Sumatra that his Department will form a new Directorate for Investigation of Copyrights Infringement to help tackle the copyrights infringements in Indonesia. He said this in response of the information from the Business Software Alliance that Indonesia is placed again by the US Trade Reprsentative office to be on "Watch List" country.

He hoped that the new Directorate for Investigation of Copyrights Infringement can in the future assist the Directorate General of Import Tax and Fees to detect imported pirated software arriving at Indonesian Airports and Harbours, so as to prevent the incoming illegal goods from abroad.

But some people argued that the practice now is to manufacture pirated software from within the Indonesian Territory, instead of transporting the illegal goods via air or sea. It was considered as more cost efficient, effective and faster acquisition of the illegal goods. Thus the plan to form a new Directorate for Copyright Infringement and trying to block the entry of illegal goods via the Indonesian ports will not be effective, and in addition it will only make the flow of goods via the Indonesian ports slowed down and will certainly slow down the Indonesian economic and trade activities, besides more manpower, energy and money to be spent by the Government.

A more elegant way of reducing the level of Proprietary Software Piracy is proposed by the Chairwoman of the Indonesian Open Source Association, Ms. Betti Alsjahbana, that a more extensive socialization of the use of Legal Software including the Open Source Software that is now getting more extensive use by students, ordinary people and many organizations and corporations in Indonesia. The advantage of this approach is that less of corporations and people will be prosecuted, because they have the option of using sophisticated Open Source Apllication Softwares at a minimal cost as compared to the Proprietary Softwares. As time passby, more and more people in Indonesia will choose Open Source instead of Illegal Proprietary Softwares to avoid heavy fines and long jail terms.

In addition of not using illegal software, the above extensive socialization will also reduce the dependency of Indonesia from foreign technology and supply, saving much needed Indonesian Foreign Currency reserve, making the people of Indonesia more innovative and creative using the Open Source Softwares.