Pirated CD vendors targeted in raid

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Police officers and officials from the Association for the Indonesian Recording Industry (Asiri) raided nine stalls selling pirated CDs and MP3 discs at Ratu Plaza shopping mall in South Jakarta on Tuesday.

"This is part of our nationwide campaign to crack down on piracy," the deputy head of the antipiracy division at Asiri, Nedy Darussamin, told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the raid.

Nedy said that police and Asiri would conduct similar raids at malls and shopping centers in Jakarta and other cities nationwide in the near future.

Although Nedy did not elaborate further, he hinted that Glodok Plaza in West Jakarta was near one of the targeted places.

During the raid, 16 police officers seized more than 10,000 pirated discs from the stalls. Five officials from Asiri witnessed the raid.

Police also took in several vendors, who did not resist arrest, for questioning.

Nedy said that over the past two months, police and Asiri had raided eight manufacturers of pirated CDs and MP3 discs across the capital, including in Dadap, North Jakarta, and an undisclosed place in Tangerang, Banten.

Meanwhile, Asiri general manager Arnel Affandi estimated that rampant piracy in the country had caused losses of up to Rp 17 trillion (US$2 billion) to the recording business last year.

He said he regretted the police's failure in addressing the piracy issue.

"In fact, we would like to conduct raids every day, but of course, we have to face the fact that the police cannot easily deploy its personnel to do that because of their other priorities," Arnel told the Post.

Arnel said that Asiri had identified at least 40 manufacturers of pirated CDs and illegal copies of MP3 discs in the city.