Glodok overrun with 'hot' VCDs

By Pandaya

JAKARTA (JP): The ubiquitous VCD vendors in downtown Kota treat passers by like long lost friends. They try to intercept pedestrians and lead them to their rudimentary wooden stalls.

They show you an array of video compact discs including children songs, the latest movies like Tarzan, The Matrix and 8 MM, western music and, of course, pornographic VCDs -- the hottest selling discs of all.

Its no secret that almost all of the discs are pirated. You can buy them as cheaply as Rp 10,000 (about US$1.5) to Rp 12,000 each. Haggling is the most important skill you must bring with you when visiting this jungle.

The vendor will usually ask for Rp 17,000 for a movie disc, Rp 12,500 for music and Rp 20,000 for pornographic one.

For the price do not expect high quality. If it is your day, you may get a disk with clear pictures and crispy sound that will not suddenly stop in the middle of a hot scene.

Last week, Benny could not resist the temptation to buy a pornographic disc for Rp 10,000 in Glodok. The trader swore the film Perempuan Penggoda (Seductive Women) had an "all-Indonesian cast", the same cast seen posing stark naked on the cover.

To his amusement when he watched it at home, he heard no noisy moans or groans. Instead Kenny G-like sweet sax melodies played in background, from the start to the very end of the three sex scenes.

"I like the music which is uninterrupted by the hot groaning and moaning and play it any time to lull me to sleep. No other sex video can serve the same purpose," he said, breaking to laughter.

The absence of juicy chats and moaning and groaning raises a suspicion that in fact the actors and actresses are not Indonesian. Who knows, maybe they are Filipino, Malaysian or Indochinese who have very similar physical features to Indonesians.

A disc trader claimed there is currently a rising demand for pornographic movies starring "Indonesians".

It is a jungle out there in Glodok. Vendors occupy more than half of Jl. Hayam Wuruk with no intervention from authorities, even though the traders obstruct the busy streets in Jakarta's most important commercial district.

For a great many years pornography, pirated video discs and cassettes have been freely traded, despite the government's repeated stance to the world that it does not tolerate indecency and violation of intellectual property rights.

The government has not revealed whether the pirated goods are locally made or imported. Tarzan, for example, has Malaysian subtitles, suggesting this as a source of origin. Just recently, authorities at Soekarno-Hatta airport seized thousands of pornographic discs, en route to Islamabad, Pakistan.

The police have occasionally raided the Glodok markets but it is business as usual as soon as the police depart. The latest raid was on Wednesday, in which the police seized some 15,000 pornographic discs and apprehended 35 vendors.

West Jakarta police chief Lt. Col. Timur Pradopo vowed that such raids would continue until the area is free from the pornographic discs, promising the traders would be "legally processed."

The police threatened the vendors with Article 282 of the Criminal Code on social indecency, which carries a maximum penalty of 18 months imprisonment and a fine of Rp 3,000.

But the colonel's sincerity is yet to be proven because so far, as traders say, people have not heard of anybody, let alone the capitalists of the powerful syndicates, being jailed for trading in pornographic VCDs.

The unsurprising blitz was apparently in response to growing demands from Muslim organizations that the government put a stop to the pornography, which has seemed to thrive in the wind of political reform.

West Jakarta deputy police chief Maj. Hengky Kaluara said after the raid, "The operation was carried out following public reports about the pornographic discs. We followed up the report."

What if there was no public report on the trading of pornography, which has taken place openly all these years?

On Thursday, just a day after the raid, the street was predictably busy again with the disc businesses. This time though, no pornographic discs were displayed like paintings, and traders were still visibly traumatized by the police action.

"We had all of our goods confiscated," said a 19 year-old vendor who has been in the business for two months. "We have no idea when we will get them (porn discs) again."

Most of the vendors, he said, sell the discs for someone else. The traders receive between Rp 2,000 and Rp 3,000 for each disc they sell. They are aware it is a hot business with a very high risk factor and therefore few wish to run their own.

This partly explains why traders are not nervous about being arrested or the seizure of their merchandise by police.

Wednesday's raid did not affect all the vendors. On Thursday, vendors on the ground floor of the sprawling blocks were busy selling porn discs.

People in the business use a strategy of keeping wholesale costs down in order to minimize losses in the event of a police raid. They package the discs in small plastic covers instead of the usual plastic box.

"We can't rely on sales of movie and music discs," said a trader on the ground floor of Harco. "We profit mostly from blue films," he said while watching people selecting pornographic discs.

Chinatown is probably the center of the pornographic disc industry. The discs can also be found easily in other shopping centers like Senen market, Ular market and Menteng, with a higher degree of secrecy.

It is no secret that VCD rentals across the city also lease pornographic discs to attract customers.

Luhut MP Pangaribuan, a lawyer, suspects the sale of pirated recordings and pornographic material continues because the security authorities have become part of the mafia.

"The whole legal system doesn't work. I have heard of only one case of an intellectual property rights perpetrator being taken to court, and it was a long time ago," he said.

Even though the violation of intellectual property rights and the trade in pornographic materials has now reached an alarming stage, the authorities are doing very little about it, he said.

Pangaribuan recalled visiting a police commandant in Jakarta where he noticed pornographic video cassettes lying around his office. When he asked why indecency cases were not taken to court, the commandant replied that there was no use because the cases would be thrown out.

Apparently, Glodok will remain a safe haven for piracy and pornography businesses. Who else cares?