Work of RI bloggers unprotected online

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 02/23/2008 4:44 PM  |  National

Indonesia could expect a significant wave of cyber-commerce if more Indonesian bloggers understood their intellectual property rights, a top official said in an Asia-Pacific symposium on digital copyrights in Ancol, North Jakarta.

"Our blogging community could generate a lot of online business," Andi Noorsaman Sommeng, director general of intellectual property rights of the Law and Human Rights Ministry, said in a two-day symposium ended Thursday.

"The reason business hasn't blossomed is because our bloggers don't understand that their writings are protected by Indonesian copyright laws and they are giving other people the opportunity to gain profit from their work."

Blogs refers to writings posted on the Internet. Indonesian copyright law allows bloggers to sue anyone who quotes or uses their work without proper accreditation.

Andi said it had been difficult to educate Indonesian bloggers about their property rights because the blogging community was geographically wide.

"Which is why we are having this symposium here, we want to raise that awareness."

Andi said Wednesday's event was the first regional symposium held by World Intellectual Property Rights (WIPO) on user-generated contents.

WIPO is an organization under the United Nations that deals with intellectual property rights. Some 180 countries, including Indonesia, are involved in its activities.

The two-day event gathered online commerce and copyright enforcement experts from around the world.

The symposium discussed methods to curb digital theft and business models in order to commercialize user-generated contents such as video clips and blogs.

In the past few years, websites built on user-generated content have gained massive popularity, as well as profits.

In 2005, News Corp. bought Myspace, a website where visitors may post blogs or videos, for US$580 million.

Andi said Indonesians blogs have "massive commercial potential" because the writers have excelled in creating regionally popular products.

"We lost out to India on software development and we can't compete with Singapore on hardware, but our content has proven to be popular among Malaysians and other people in our region," he said.

"Indonesian comic books and music are very popular in neighboring countries.

"I imagine our blogs could be just as popular.

"It would be big business, wouldn't it?" he said.

In 2007, Communications and Information Minister Muhammad Nuh declared Oct. 27 as National Bloggers Day.

The declaration was made at Grand Indonesia, Central Jakarta, during Pesta Blogger 2007 (Bloggers' Party), Indonesia's first large meeting of bloggers attended by around 500 people.

According to the Asia Blogging Network, there are more than 150,000 Indonesian bloggers, at least 60 percent of whom are active. The number doubles every month. (anw)

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