Software piracy causes over $544m in losses

Software piracy has remained rampant in Indonesia, causing more than US$544 million in state losses last year, a business association says.

Donny A Sheyoputra, representative of the Business Software Alliance, said Wednesday the association would only issue its annual report in May, but he was certain the potential state tax revenue lost would exceed the 2008 mark of $544 billion.

“The amount of state losses must be higher in 2009 than 2008. Let’s wait until the data is made public in May,” Donny was quoted by kompas.com.

National Police senior detective Sr. Comr. Tony Harmanto told the same forum the police probed in four cases of software piracy last year. But in January 2010 alone the detectives have dealt with three cases.

Tony said software piracy was difficult to eradicate as the 2002 law on copyrights failed to deter people from the crime. The law threatens offenders with a minimum sentence of one month in jail or Rp 1 million in fine.

“We cannot meddle with the judiciary institution. Once a panel of judges decided to return piracy equipment to the convict,” Tony said.

Indonesia remains on the US priority watch list due to the widespread piracy.