100,000 pirated discs, porn flicks seized
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
City police raided on Thursday a warehouse storing pirated CDs, VCDs and DVDs in Glodok, West Jakarta, a business area known as the country's largest pirated CD market.
In the raid, authorities confiscated about 100,000 pirated discs from the warehouse, including some 4,000 pirated adult movie discs and seven boxes of disc covers.
City police fraud squad deputy chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Agung Sabar Santoso said that officers were still searching for the owner of the warehouse identified as "TP".
"We will continue to hunt him down. We believe that he is responsible for producing a lot of other discs. We are now investigating other locations and buildings where he produces and stores similar pirated discs," Agung said.
The raid was part of a police crackdown on sources of pirated discs widely distributed across the capital, he said.
"We are still trying to seek the factories where the discs were produced to directly address the problems from the source."
However, discs could also be being created outside the city and brought in illicitly, Agung said.
Despite laws on intellectual property and piracy, copied discs are common in Jakarta and retailers sell them openly in stalls across the city without fear of prosecution.
Several laws, including Law No. 8/1992 on film copyright, Law No. 19/2002 on intellectual property rights, and the Criminal Code provide penalties of up to three years' jail for disc piraters and sellers.
Two other well-known centers for pirated discs are Ratu Plaza in Central Jakarta and Ambassador Mall in South Jakarta.
About 2 million new pirated CDs, VCDs, and DVDs are distributed across the country every day with an average price of between Rp 3,000 and 10,000 apiece, while original discs are sold for between Rp 45,000 to Rp 200,000 each.
Domestic recording business players and distributors said that they were planning to produce and distribute inexpensive original CDs, VCDs and DVDs directly for local markets in a bid to compete with pirated copies.
The association of Indonesian Recording and Traders chairman Doemoli Siahaan said that they had formed a consortium comprised of producers and distributors to produce and sell original VCDs and CDs at Rp 10,000 and DVDs at Rp 12,500.
A trader in Glodok said retailers regularly gave money local police precincts to ensure they could sell their goods freely.
"Every day police officers from the West Jakarta and the Taman Sari precincts come here, but they do nothing to us. The boss has taken care of them. Look at the two men there, they are police officers from the Taman Sari police station," he told The Jakarta Post while pointing to two men talking to a disc seller.