DOES PIRATED BOOKS HELP GOVERNMENT IN DEVELOPING LITERACY
PROGRAM FOR STUDENTS?
Arinas Sabila/ 210221830812
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”
St. Augustine
This quote becomes well-known to everyone, whether as a trigger quote or simply a
popular quote. But, at the very least, we may recall this quote whenever and wherever we are.
Reading a book may provide us with a wealth of information. The more you read, the more you
learn. As a result, the book might be used to help the country realize its aim of making the entire
society more educated and insightful.
On the contrary, in recent year, book piracy is highly prevalent in society. Meanwhile, the
most frequent users of book piracy are students, who are assumed to be well-educated (Iqbal in
Kumparan.com). Because the original book is too expensive, the students purchase a pirated copy.
Furthermore, some lecturers recommend to university students books that have been published for
a long time, even though the original books are quite uncommon in bookstores.
Regarding this issue, there are two ethical violations: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
ethics and business ethics (Maryna, et. al., 2013). The amount of entrepreneurs who have decided
to participate in company that violates intellectual property rights appears to be related to market
demand or strong customer interest. The evidence is that there are many business operating in that
industry right now, and the evidence is that they are busy and even quite successful. The argument
is that it is criminal for businesses to disobey IPR restrictions in the eyes of customers. As long as
their expectations for products of reasonable quality and low cost while maintaining a respectable
reputation can be met. The issue of rights violations is almost completely ignored.
In Indonesia, the government develops a literacy program to enhance society's interest in
reading, particularly among students. This program was developed in response to society's lack of
interest in reading a book. That was not a new phenomenon in Indonesia. Alternatively, the reader,
especially students, ignored some regulations whether they buy the original books or not as long
as they got the book they want to read. In nowadays, the seller of pirated books not only sell the
book in the offline store but also on the online store which easier for the reader especially students
to get the book with lower price.
This case became a hot topic on Twitter in 2019, Tere Liye as a famous author complained
about this phenomenon because most of his books are pirated and sold them in a lower price when
he knew it in the online stores. It leads to the pros and cons on this phenomenon which made
Raditya Dika, as a famous author among high school students, also feel disappointed because the
process in writing and publishing the books took a long time till the books are distributed in the
official book store. On the other hand, contra group said that most of the reader of his books are
high school students who do not know about the problem of pirated books in Indonesia.
For the solution, to develop the literacy program among students, the government should
prepared various book genre to be distributed in the school library, so that the students will choose
their own genre without feeling bored. Also, the teacher have to educate the students about the
book piracy such as tell them about the consequence of this problem. It will help the students to
avoid in buying the pirated books and appreciate the author by buying the original one.
References:
Maryna, D. S., et. al. 2013. Etika Pelanggaran Hak Kekayaan Intelektual di Indonesia. Malang.
Iqbal, M. M., 2021. Literasi dan Pembajakan Buku di Indonesia. in Kumparan.com (accessed on
20th of December 2021)