Insights
Indoxxi is one of the most famous movie piracy sites in Asia. Alexa ranks it in the top 1000 websites worldwide, and top 100 in most Asian countries. An Indonesian piracy group, funded by online add click systems, operates vast numbers of illegal piracy websites offering foreign and Indonesian movies. In fact Indoxxi sites have been repeatedly closed, but they reopen offshore by domain hopping to new sites immediately. It has been flagged by the USTR as a notorious illegal piracy site. But no action has been taken by authorities other than site blocking.
Then after several years of operation, Indonesia’s newly appointed Minister of Communications and Information (KOMINFO), Mr. Johnny Plate acted to shut down a large number of piracy sites in December, citing the need to protect creativity and investment. Then at the same time Indoxxi announced that to was closing down as of January 1st. Within days mirror sites with similar domains were up again. So its not clear if this was just a ploy to hide the fact that they would reopen and just dodge the KOMINFO blocking tools. Given that Indonesia blocks many times of non approved websites (gambling, pornography), it is not clear why piracy sites are so easily able to avoid the censors.
