Man could be jailed for cybercrime
Man could be jailed for cybercrime
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A former manager of local cosmetic giant PT Martina Berto,
charged with illegally registering the domain name
MustikaRatu.com after the company's main competitor PT Mustika
Ratu, should be jailed for four months, the prosecution have
demanded.
Defendant Tjandra Sugiono, 32, should also pay a fine of Rp 30
million, prosecutor Y.N. Eddy told the Central Jakarta District
Court on Thursday.
The case is the first cybercrime ever tried in the country.
"The fact that the defendant had registered a popular domain
name without asking permission from the owner indicates an unfair
business competition," Eddy told the hearing presided over by
judge Chasiany R. Tandjung.
The defendant was charged with violating Article 382 of the
Criminal Code on fraudulent competition, and Article 48 of the
Antimonopoly Law No. 5/1999 which requires a business party not
ban its competitor's consumers from making business contact with
the rival.
According to the prosecutor, Tjandra registered domain name
MustikaRatu.com in October 1999. PT Martina Berto was identified
as the registrant while Tjandra acted as the administrative and
billing contact.
The MustikaRatu.com website would lead visitors to the Belia-
Online.com website displaying Belia cosmetics, a product of PT
Martina for teenagers, Eddy said.
Tjandra admitted that he registered the domain name for
financial benefit, Eddy said, but he had never offered PT Mustika
rights to the domain name, until he resigned from PT Martina in
June 2000.
It is common among Internet users that domain names to be sold
to other interested parties for financial benefit, he said.
Eddy said several overseas business partners of PT Mustika,
including Abdul Rahman Zohaifi and Bros Co in Arab Saudi and
Malaysian company Medical Supplies, became confused as when they
clicked the domain name, they found Belia products, instead of PT
Mustika products.
"Because of what the defendant did, PT Mustika lost more than
Rp 10 billion following a significant decrease in business
transactions with its business partners," he said.
Tjandra had withdrawn the domain name in Sept. 2000, after
Martha Tilaar, the owner of PT Martina, ordered him to do so.