Meta and TikTok Join Google in Opposing Indonesia's AI Copyright Law Revisions

If the bill passes, Indonesia could become the first country in Southeast Asia to cover AI in its copyright law. Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country and one of the region's biggest digital advertising markets. The outcome will shape how platforms and AI developers handle news and creative content there, and other governments weighing similar rules are likely to watch it.

The companies concentrated on two parts of the draft. Agung Pamungkas, Google's government affairs and public policy manager for Indonesia, told the hearing that requiring payment for news links would limit Indonesians' access to news. Berni Moestafa, Meta's head of public policy in Indonesia, said that under a compensation requirement, publishers "could lose readership traffic" as well as potential advertising and subscription revenue. He argued that sending a reader to an article is different from reproducing it.

TikTok focused on the AI provisions. Noudhy Valdryno, its head of public policy in Indonesia, asked lawmakers not to apply disclosure requirements to content that AI only helped create, as opposed to content it generated entirely. He also urged them to keep safe-harbour protections for platforms, saying they cannot reliably check who owns the copyright in uploaded material or whether it is licensed.

What the Draft Proposes

Reuters first reported the draft in July. Accounts of that version published at the time said platforms would pay state-supervised collective management organisations when they aggregate, republish or preview news, or use it to train AI. Those organisations would then pass the money on to publishers. The draft would also protect AI-assisted works only where they meet criteria for human involvement, and would exclude fully machine-generated works, although it did not say how much human input would be needed. Some reports said it would also stop AI from imitating a creator's distinctive style and require disclosure of AI's role in a work. The government said at the time that the text was still under review and could change.

The platforms' arguments are close to the ones they made against Australia's news bargaining code and Canada's Online News Act. In Canada, Meta chose to block news on its services rather than pay. Indonesia already pushed platforms towards deals with publishers through a 2024 presidential regulation. The new bill would put that approach into copyright law and extend it to AI training.

The bill is still being debated in parliament, and no date has been set for a vote. How lawmakers handle TikTok's request for a carve-out for AI-assisted content, and whether the safe-harbour protections survive, will decide how much of the compliance burden falls on the platforms.