The Evolution of Music Piracy in Indonesia

Ilustrasi (dok)

JAKARTA (IndoTelko) - The current rampant case of legal music digital piracy has triggers Heal Our Music (HoM) activists to continuously beating the drums of war against illegal file downloading.

HoM is one of the movements initiated by M Gopal Utiarrachman since a few years ago in order to fight the piracy on legal music.

Utiarrachman who is also the CEO of GENiD has developed legal music platforms and digital music store since 2008. The platform is a mainstay for the music industry to close the hole due to the loss in the rampant illegal music in the digital era.

"In our calculations the piracy action with the rampant illegal song gives a potential loss on the music industry amounting to Rp12 trillion per year. We know the details because we have a lot of acquaintances in the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to calculate the traffic," said Gopal to IndoTelko, Thursday (4/6).
 
Gopal said that in contrast compared to a few years ago, the recent piracy acts have evolved.

"We used to war with portals that provide file sharing or music illegally. Now users change their behavior, rather than downloading the music they opted for streaming," said Utiarrachman.

Utiarrachman said that the education on piracy have showed its results by making the public aware that it is illegal to download songs and it is detrimental to all parties.
 
"Streaming is mostly done through official channels. Well, the problem, in the official channels, many of the owners did not realize that their songs has rights or their rights have not been acquired properly," Utiarrachman said.
 
Utiarrachman added that the concept of everything on the internet is free must be straightened out in the perception of the community.

"The industry might not be running like this forever. What is on the internet is free, it is not true. We must straighten from a legal standpoint, copyright, and more. Well, if we can boost this awareness then piracy through peer to peer lines can be reduced," Utiarrachman said.

Fight
Further, he said, the pressure against the digital piracy perpetrators is also increasingly heavy as the technology ecosystem against illegal music.

"Now the technology ecosystem is fighting. Well, we should be able to get into the ecosystem, could not resist the flow because this is a global game. We must seek creative works of the nation recognized by this ecosystem so that the rights do not disappear. There are two factors in a song namely moral and economic rights, one of them could be lost if not taken care by the ecosystem," Utiarrachman described.

Currently the government is making the regulation to be compatible with the world's ecosystems through copyright law. "There is a National Collective Management Institute (LMKN) who is reorganizing the moral and economic rights issue. It is indeed a hard work," Utiarrachman concluded.

Alert System
Earlier, Chairman of the Creative Economy entities, Triawan Munaf admitted that there are no powerful way to suppress piracy despite the Copyright Act has been established. "South Korea and France have developed an Alert System, I think its worth to be adopted also in Indonesia if the digital creative can develop a similar application," Utiarrachman said.

Through the Alert System network providers will be able to detect the work of illegal downloading activity in cyberspace and give a warning to the user.

"The first warning stating that the file they are downloading is illegal and will be transferred to the legal files. If still insisting to download illegal file then the operator will lower the internet speed. Digital piracy in South Korea has been reduced to 50% after the system is applied," Utiarrachman added.

According to him, this way is more effective than forcing the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Kemenkominfo) to become the digital police to close the portals that provide illegal files. "It is more powerful to the end user. I expect the local digital creators can develop applications to help handling the piracy work," Utiarrachman said.(es)