Indonesia IP News
Largest number of pay TV firms in the world!
Indonesia, with over 250 million people scattered throughout thousands of islands do not have sufficient television channels to cater to its diverse ethnic groups. Often, churning out television programs is cost prohibitive, and the people are often bored by the limited amount of content available for viewing. Fortunately, Indonesia has put in place a number of satellites and there are available many television channels beamed from it. It is paid TV, and it is supplemented by many other channels that can be subscribed via land cables. To date, there are an estimated 2,600 over pay TV channels across the country, many of them operating without a state license. It must be one of the greatest free for all TV accessibility country in the world!
As complaints of piracy reached an uncomfortable level, with international media firms admonishing legal suits, it became necessary for the government to rein in those who had been operating in the backwaters. The government, according to Bambang Subijantoro, director of Broadcasting in Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Depkominfo), has finally completed a judicial review on the issue of licenses, and will be making moves to bring some measure of lawfulness to these pay TV firms, especially those who are small in size and operating in the outlying provinces. As a member of the WTO, Indonesia will have to abide to its laws, and respecting intellectual property laws by its citizen will be the top priority.
According to Mr. Subijantoro, there is a huge potential in developing the TV, and also cinematic contents in Indonesia. Just going by the size of the population will indicate a huge form of activity to be derived from the media. It just have to look at India’s film industry to see where they can go, with the ultimate aim of exporting its product to overseas’ market. But before it can do that, it will first have to respect intellectual property regulations, and to strictly enforced (it is never easy to enforce anything in this largely spread out country though) IP Rights of others’. Hopefully, with IP laws being put into place, Indonesia will be able to draw investments. As it is, the entertainment media has a huge potential, as it already have a large human resources to draw from, even with the multimedia formats included.
August 18, 2009.
ASEAN-China Free Trade Area: Benefits and Treats
The ASEAN-China FT Area came into force in January 2010. As it covers a population of 1.7 billion consumers, it is the world’s largest free trade zone. The implications are huge. In effect, goods and services will have free entry into each other’s country with very low tariffs. As always, there is the good and bad side of everything.
The good side, depending on which side you are on is the availability of goods and services at the lowest cost possible. If you are a country that is exporting outside of the free trade area, then you could in theory make products that are cheap to sell, as compared to those that are made outside the free trade area. You could then sell your goods to the EU or US and still make good profits.
The bad side of course is that existing products manufacturer will face stiff competition due to the tearing down of import tariffs, which had been used to protect domestic manufacturers. This is highlighted by the problem facing Indonesian textile and footwear manufacturers. With the onslaught of cheap Chinese imports, these Indonesian manufacturers might not be able to survive for long. If they are forced to go bust, where is there any thing to sell to other countries?
Seeing the seriousness of the implications of the ASEAN-China free trade agreement, Indonesia has set up a special committee to look into the matter. Under great pressure to delay the implementation of the free trade for Indonesia, the government will have to structure new schemes such that the home grown textile and shoe manufacturers will be able to overcome cheap imports by upgrading equipments and technologies.
April 11, 2010.