Yogyakarta, August 5th 2020—Center for Digital Society is back with Oposit #6 about intellectual property in the digital era. Irnasya Shafira – an assistant researcher in CfDS – as the host opened the session with a brief explanation about her understanding of intellectual property. Ines explained that pirated movies that are widely enjoyed by people are actually a form of intellectual property violation.Similar to the previous episodes, this episode of Oposit is also live streamed through CfDS’s Instagram. However, unlike previous episodes, other than inviting people to share their stories about the topic, this episode also invited an expert to talk about intellectual property rights in the digital era.
Intellectual property rights are closely related to several jobs, such as content creation. This is what Seren said, the first audience that wants to share her story in this episode. Seren is a social media specialist and a content creator for several brands. In her line of work, it is inevitable that the content created is inspired by some articles that already exist. In a content there is usually a supporting element that is taken from other sites – such as freepik for design – that turns out to have copyright and can’t be freely used.
Each site has different regulations in terms of their intellectual property rights. There are sites that allow a free usage with credits, and some ask for a payment. Free usage of a property with credits turns out to have its own dilemma, because some don’t put credit to the rightful owner yet they are considered to not violate the intellectual property rights because of the difficulty of seeing that content.
Other than in contents, Seren also shared her knowledge on intellectual property rights in film reviews. Review film accounts from America that she likes got tangled in an intellectual property case a couple times because they added a movie clip to the review. These clips which were protected by copyright made the film review have to be taken down. However, in America, there is a rule called fair usage. In the fair usage rule, what is problematic is how many changes are made to the original content.. With fair usage, content writers – in this case movie reviewers – can win a case under the argument that a clip they use is just an addition. Compared to America, Seren feels that Indonesia is way more relaxed when it comes to intellectual property rights.
A different story was told by Shirley, the second viewer in the Oposit live stream. As someone who likes to create song covers, she understands intellectual property rights in the world of music. There comes a time when singers and songwriters are out-famoused by someone who does covers of their songs. This is because the writer who made the song cover often doesn’t give credit to the original singer and songwriter. Shirley herself always gives credits to the singer and songwriter of the song that she covers. For her, giving credit is each singer’s responsibility.
In intellectual property rights, there are three things that are not known by many people according to Rijal, the expert that is invited in this episode of Oposit. Those three aspects are copyrights ( a product of a thought that is manifested to reality and that is declarative ), industrial wealth (which refers to how someone creates something that is legally acknowledged like patents and trademarks), as well as geographical indication (things that are related to geographic conditions)
Rijal explains that copyrights have moral and economic rights within it. As long as someone has not duplicated or claimed the property, they still don’t have economical rights to that property. They only have a moral right which can’t be used to protect a property. Meanwhile, when it comes to industrial wealth, what is noticed is how identical one product is with another product.
This sixth Oposit was very fun. Ines as a host managed the session interactively so that a lot of viewers are excited to share their stories in the comment section. The recording of this session can be seen in CfDS’s IGTV channel. For those who are still interested to talk about intellectual property rights, you can join CfDS’s Difussion event which will talk more about this topic.