Reuters reported Wednesday that Meta and TikTok joined Google in pushing back on proposed revisions to Indonesia’s copyright law that would require platforms to pay publishers for displaying news and would set rules for artificial intelligence. The comments were made at a public hearing of the House of Representatives’ legislation committee, known as Baleg, in Jakarta. Suara.com also covered the session.
If the bill is passed, Indonesia “could become the first country in Southeast Asia to incorporate AI in its copyright law,” Reuters said. The bill, a revision of Law No. 28 of 2014, has not been passed. Suara reported that the government has submitted 1,117 items for discussion and that Baleg deputy chair Martin Manurung said the committee aimed to finish before year-end. On Monday, Antara reported that his target was a plenary session before the sitting closes on Dec. 12.
Agung Pamungkas, Google’s Indonesia government affairs and public policy manager, told the hearing that requiring platforms to pay for showing news links would limit Indonesians’ access to news, Reuters reported. According to Suara, in translation, he said Google wanted “strong protection for copyright holders, while still preserving the function of the internet for users.” He asked lawmakers to allow a text-and-data-mining exception with an opt-out such as robots.txt, a signal Google and OpenAI have said they plan to support, and to retain safe-harbor rules. Restricting AI training on local data “would reduce fluency in the Indonesian language,” he said, according to Suara, in translation.
Berni Moestafa, Meta’s public policy head in Indonesia, appeared virtually, Suara reported. Reuters quoted him as saying a payment requirement meant news “publishers could lose readership traffic as well as potential advertising and subscription revenue.” According to Suara, in translation, he cited Articles 29 and 30 and said payment could be required “merely because a link, a short preview, or a recommendation is displayed, even when the publisher shares it voluntarily.”
Noudhy Valdryno, TikTok’s head of public policy in Indonesia, told lawmakers that disclosure requirements should not apply where AI is used only in an assistive capacity rather than to fully create content, Reuters reported. He also urged lawmakers to preserve safe-harbor protections, saying platforms cannot reliably determine copyright ownership or licenses.
At the same hearing, Dahlan Dahi, chair of the Press Council’s digital and sustainability commission, said digital platforms take as much as 80% of digital advertising revenue and that publisher traffic in Indonesia fell by as much as 70% after generative AI arrived in November 2022, Suara reported. Meta has also faced publisher pushback over AI scraping in other markets. On Monday, Antara reported that the government and parliament had agreed in principle that works generated entirely by AI would not receive copyright protection.