Accute Copyright Infringement in My Country

A really – really weird thing happened in this country. After a spammer taught other would-be spammers on how to spam on luxurious hotel, now a ‘legalization’ of copyright infringements by somewhat a big internet company in Indonesia and the rest of the citizen.

It started the day when I browse through various topic on KafeGaul and stumbled on this topic (you have to login to read the entries) about someone selling anime scan and distribute it via CD (thus selling it). I then warned the whole forum about that here (under the name ‘punclut’).

Guess what respond I have? Everyone (well, almost) scold at me! Some of them is somewhat a no-brainer and the rest of them doesn’t even contain any logical arguments behind it. I’ll quote some here:

BARANG ILLEGAL ??????? siapa sih elo ? Polisi ? atau orang sok idealis ? sejak kapan Comicscan, e-book ataupun ROM itu barang Illegal ? kalo nggak suka jangan hidup di Indonesia, kalo loe udah cukup kaya untuk memenuhi semua kebutuhan elo, apa loe pikir semua orang indonesia bisa seperti itu ? gue suka comicscan tapi nggak berarti gue nggak beli komik aslinya selama gue mampu & sama dengan begitu banyak pembeli comicscan lainnya. so don’t bragging here and talk crap ….. if you cuold help us buy the real comic … now you could talk … if not …. JUST SHUT UP

and another one here:

sudah…sudah jgn marah2 kie sabar jangan ditanggepin terlalu serius dia gak tau kalo di sini banyak yang dagangannya lebih sangar
buat sodara punclut saya gak jualan kok siapa yang bilang jualan. orang saya cuma bantuin temen2 kok yang pengen donlot komik scan tapi gak punya waktu dan sebagai gantinya saya rasa wajar kalo temen2 “ngasih” uang sebagai ganti beli CD, bayar listrik, bayar internet ama sdikit uang lelah.

and another one:

Well ….. anak orang kaya kayaknya ? mana dia tau kalo gue harus banting tulang untuk bisa baca Komik US . Gara-gara orang sok idealis macem dia nih yang bikin gue makin kesulitan memenuhi hobi gue. gue nggak bakal beli komik bajakan selama ada penerbit Indonesia memfasilitasi komik US dengan harga rasional, kalo nggak apa gue mau disuruh ngiler terus ? mana itu WY Comics, M&C ataupun PMK yang serius mau bener-bener memenuhi kebutuhan kita , and asal tahu aja gue mbaca Comicscan karena terpaksa, kalo gue kaya ya beli komik asli. Well …. PUNCLUT … next time watch out what you’re talking about.

In short (for those of you who doesn’t speak Bahasa Indonesia), the first quote is asking me (in a harsh way) who the f*** am I. Then blurted that comicscan and other forms of ebook is not illegal, continues to rambled on that he blamed people because he cannot read comics because its price tag is too high, yaddi yadda. The second quote talks that he is only helping a friend out. And because he is helping friend, he thinks that he needed something on return (which is in form of money). The third quote is pretty much the same like the first one.

I’ll rebuttal it one by one. Nope I’m not an idealistic. I’m just an ordinary person who may or may not commit foul on the internet on my past. Sometimes in the past I did use illegal programs just because I don’t know that there’s a better and free alternatives such as Thunderbird, Linux, and the likes. After receiving knowledges about the LEGAL stuffs that I can have and use, I started to migrating things. I even use a campus-licensed Windows and campus-licensed Office in addition to that and the rest is either open source or freeware.

The arguments of “Oh this is too expensive for me� is a typical arguments of a whiner (and whiner never winner). If that’s too expensive for you, find a better job! If the job still doesn’t make enough money to ‘satisfy’ your hobby, find an alternatif! If you still can’t find it, MAKE YOUR OWN! If you can’t make your own after those steps… then YOU ARE a loser.

The “it’s too expensive� argument doesn’t make the whole thing legal. It’s downright illegal and you are a criminal by that (at least you’ve commited digital crimes of copyright). DC and Marvel Comic Scans is not LEGAL to be scanned and then DISTRIBUTED. Not to mention that NOT ALL ebooks are legal (some are free -legal and some needs you to pay a certain ammounts of money). And come to mentioned that, Indonesia has already agreed to ratify the international law of Copyright Act since the Megawati presidency. It’s straight forward that it is illegal.

And for the second quote, how on earth charging things around makes you qualify that you are doing good favor to your friends. First, it is illegal to distribute those stuff you distribute. Second, burning a CD only costs you 3000 max (make that 6k including the shipping). Oh I’m sure you’ll whine “how about my online time and connection�, well screw you! If you can’t find something better to make use of your internet connection rather than downloading comicscan and burn it and then distribute it (at a fee… which i call SELLING), then you deserve to be a loser.

This kind of pull-push controversy ravaging on Indonesian internet these past year is just a straight forward stupidity. If you said that copyright act is only benefiting the capitalist, you are damn right and that’s why there’s other type of licensing such as copyleft or GPL or CreativeCommon or whatever.

Complaining that the price of stuffs is expensive is also indicating that you are a whiner too. If you can’t afford to buy it, then don’t. Especially if its just one kind of a hobby to deal with. Find another hobby. Find the one that you can afford but still give meaning to you. Draw your own comic in change of just staring at those picture.DComic and Marvel are there to make money, not to fulfill your needs (although sometimes that is a catchy business gimmick).

Some post even discrediting my by saying that I’m not even 20 years old idealist. So what? Does age has anything to do with maturity? You see, being old is a must while being mature is a choice. Although I’m not even 20 yet, but I am proud that at the very early stage of life I can at least draw a simple line of which is right and which is wrong (infringing copyright).

By the way, I’ve reported the ‘incident’ to IMT which I held responsible because not moderating the forum on the right way. I also have notified Indonesian Police (Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia). I have notified both DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

Somewhat, I also notified vbulletin regarding the script validity that KG’s using. I mean, what a respectable forum would host a trading place full of pirated goods and links to porn stuffs and illegal downloadable programs? And add to that… who knows wether if their version of vB valid or not?

You see… messing with me means real business

PS: Hey, I looked handsome on that photograph didn’t I? And plus, I don’t come from a rich family. We only saved enough so that we can afford all those thing we can.