Yogyakarta, August 7th 2020 – “It was natural if our society experienced a culture shock to the IPR concept, because our society was familiar with the concept of communal property, not individualism,”. The communal property keyword concept was enough to be an explanation starter from one of the speakers in this 30th Digital Difussion that was held by Center for Digital Society (CfDS) on Google Meet platform (7/8). It brought a theme: Understanding IPR in the Digital Age. CfDS invited three speakers that was consisted by creative industry players, there were Henricus Pria (Writer and Director of Studio Batu and Rekata Studio) and Bani Nasution (Independent Film Maker of Along The One Way), also from the academics, Laurensia Andrini (the lecturer of Faculty of Law of UGM). The two-hour discussion session was used by the speakers to share the materials related to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) from both theoretical and empirical concepts.
According to Laurensia’s explanation, Intellectual Property Rights was an exclusive right that was produced by human thoughts (Usman, 2003). Laurensia also added that in the beginning, IPR concept was only applied in the west which required the concept of individualist property or concepts that emphasized the existence of ownership that was owned over oneself. Meanwhile, it seemed that this concept did not apply in Indonesia because our culture tended to be a communal society. Therefore, IPR concepts were strange by Indonesian people. Not only that, this concept also gave rise to culture shock due to the concept of communal society rather than individual property concept as prevailing in the west.
Besides the need to understand the literal definition of IPR itself, we need to know about several types of IPR as stated by Laurensia. First, there was copyright, patent, trademark, industrial design rights, geographical indications, etc. Of the several rights mentioned, Laurensia explained conceptually about three types of rights, there was Copyright which is the right that is owned by a creation in the field of science, art, and literature. Then, Patents are the rights granted to new inventions and usually applied in industry. Also, Trademarks is a right that can be owned over the ownership of a work which is considered as a differentiator from other works, such as logos, pictures, names, words, letters, colors ordered in the 2D or 3D form, voices, and etc.
By differentiating those three types of IPR, Laurensia hoped that in the future, the creative industrial players could protect their rights according to the law and regulations. Regarding this issue, as one of the creative industrial players, Henricus also explained about IPR in Indonesia that was still being a problem. He emphasized on a film, as one of the filmmakers, Henricus, was aware that in this era, people were faced with various platforms that became digital distribution, from Netflix, iflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Criterion Collection, etc. On the other side, the existence of those platforms, continued by Bani, could be a motivation for the filmmakers to always create something. But, on the negative side, he was concerned about piracy.
Piracy could be found from free sites such as IndoXXI, The Pirate Bay, and Kickass Torrents. Where this piracy, according to Laurensia, could happen because of the culture that still adhered communal property concepts. In overcoming other people’s copyright issues and avoiding plagiarism, Bani emphasized that the basic thing in making films was to collect various kinds of works, ranging from footage, music, and videos into a new work. Because of that, from the beginning of the filmmaking process, we should pay attention to the legality of the works. Not only that, the plagiarism issue also did not always have to be resolved by legal means, Laurensia in this case suggested, it was better to negotiate in a friendly manner. Also as a reminder, a work that was created can be owned based on the basis of moral rights and economic rights.
Moral rights will forever be attached to the creator of the works that have been created. While economic rights are the rights of creators or copyright holders to commercialize works, usually these economic rights vary in the duration of ownership of a work. Laurensia also provided an important note that the use of a work will not include violations if it is used for education, research, security and government administration, lectures for educational purposes, and performances which are free of charge. As long as its use includes the source and does not cause loss to the reasonable interests of the creator.
In the end of explanation, it was emphasized that, “The purpose of IPR was to bridge creative’s advancement and innovations for the creators. But, we should remember that the existence of IPR also can be a weapon for creativity if it was not accompanied with awareness and obligations as a creator,” Laurensia emphasized.