Photo: Illustration
Two weeks ago, President Joko Widodo said he wanted to get tough on piracy in Indonesia, specifically the pirating and profiting of illegal DVDs and VCDs. Soon after he made those remarks, Jakarta police made raids on several DVD factories and shops. It looked like the police might actually be serious about cracking down on piracy.
Further proof supposedly came yesterday when police conducted a raid at Mal Ambasador, one of Jakarta’s top spots for the purchase of pirated DVDs.
“We searched, eight stalls at the Ambassador, during which we seized evidence in the form of 2,000 DVD/VCDs,” said South Jakarta Metro Police Commander Riki Y Ariandi today as quoted by Tribunnews.
Riki also said police detained nine employees who participated in the sale of the pirated wares.
However, despite this being a raid upon one of the biggest pirated DVD centers in the city, we’d actually argue that this shows the police are not serious about piracy. Anybody who has been to Mal Ambassador knows that it probably holds dozens of DVD stalls which each stock, at a conservative estimate, 5,000-10,000 DVDs. So what the police seized was a drop in the bucket.
What likely happened is somebody (possibly the police themselves) tipped off the DVD sellers about the raid, allowing the vast majority to close their stalls before the police arrived. Those sorts of fake, for-show raids have been going on for years.
So if you’re worried that your favorite pirated DVD emporium is going to have to go clean, we’d say you can take it easy for now.
