Comparison of Digital Copyright Protection on Over the Top (OTT) Streaming Content Media in Indonesia and the United States

Abstract

In the rapid technological development, physical boundaries have begun to disappear and the internet has created a ‘free culture’. This challenges the concept of copyright along with the emergence of ‘digital copyright’ objects. Digital copyright objects have become the main commodity of Over-the-Top services which provide means of communication and entertainment through the internet. Content streaming services such as Netflix, use films as well as other cinematographic works as its main commodities. OTT Streaming media helps to protect copyright holders' rights that previously have been violated by illegal streaming sites on the internet. Unfortunately, it also raises a new question: how digital copyrightobjects can be protected in this kind of service. Without physical form, copyright object can be distributed easily on the internet, and it may lead to right violations. To answer this problem, the authors aim to describe the digital copyright protection on OTT Streaming Content Media in Indonesia and compare them to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of the United States of America using a descriptive-analytical approach. This study employed a normative juridical approach with secondary data. The results of this study indicate that digital copyright protection in Indonesia is still centered on conventional copyright objects, and a sui generis law is needed to provide better protection for digital copyright objects.