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National Police investigation has found that five karaoke companies, including those owned by dangdut singer Inul Daratista, pop singer Rossa and ST 12 band front man Charly van Houten, have been illegally using copyrighted music videos for years.

In a press conference on Thursday, the police'€™s economics and special crimes investigation director, Brig. Gen. Kamil Razak, said that a man, identified as Mochamad Fitrianto Agusman, 30, had been apprehended for allegedly distributing thousands of karaoke music videos to the five companies without permission.

'€œSince 2008, he illegally created and supplied music videos to 75 karaoke outlets, including those under management of PT Inul Vista Pratama, PT Diva Head Office and PT Charly Family Karaoke,'€ he said, referring to companies respectively owned by Inul, Rossa and Charly.

Aside from the three companies, Fitrianto also sold music videos to popular karaoke chains PT Imperium Happy and PT Nav Karaoke.

Police investigators arrested the suspect at his office, DZ Studio, at Bumi Serpong Damai, Tangerang, Banten on Tuesday.

From him, the police confiscated 11 computers, 2 laptops, 62 DVDs containing karaoke songs and some documents.

Head of the police'€™s trade industry sub-division, Sr. Comr. Sang Made Mahendra Jaya, estimated that the suspect had illegally produced and sold more than 60,000 karaoke videos from various artists.

To create the music videos, Fitrianto illegally downloaded song files from the Internet and combined those files with video footage and song lyrics.

'€œHe has six employees to help him create the videos. To each outlet, he charged Rp 45 million [US$3,850] for a year'€™s supply of karaoke videos. His monthly earnings stood at around Rp 200 million,'€ Mahendra said.

The suspect will be charged under Article 49 and Article 72 of the 2002 Copyright Law for distributing copyrighted work without permission, carrying a maximum penalty of seven years in prison and Rp 5 billion in fines.

The police are also preparing to charge the suspect with money laundering.

Mahendra said that the police would soon summon the five karaoke companies.

'€œFrom the suspect, we obtained copies of his cooperation agreements with the companies. We will summon them to find out more about the agreements,'€ he said.

The case was first reported by Moldy, the guitarist of rock band Radja, early this year. He accused the karaoke companies of illegally using the band'€™s songs, including '€œParah'€, which had not been released to the public.

According to Moldy, the illegal distribution of their songs had become a major factor prompting a record label to significantly slash the contract value of Radja'€™s newest album.

Radja'€™s legal representative, Yanuar Bagus Sasmito, said that the band had tried to discuss the matter with the karaoke companies but to no avail.

'€œWe reported the case after realizing that the karaoke companies, including the major ones, had shown no intention to resolve this issue,'€ he said when he reported the case at National Police headquarters back in January, as quoted by tribunnews.com.