Indonesia is on the verge of implementing significant copyright reforms that could transform the dynamics between news publishers and major tech firms like Google and Meta.
Indonesia is preparing one of the boldest copyright reforms in Asia and if the proposed law is passed it could change the relationship between news publishers and Big Tech companies like Google and Meta. After Australia forced Google and Meta to pay news organisations for using their content, Indonesia is reportedly taking a similar route while also adding rules for AI.
According to a Reuters report, the draft copyright bill proposes that Big Tech should compensate news publishers when they aggregate, republish or even show link previews of news content.
More importantly, tech brands like OpenAI, Meta or Anthropic using copyrighted material to train AI models may also have to pay or obtain licences, depending on how the content is used.
This is a major shift as AI companies increasingly rely on publicly available content to train their models.
For news publishers, this is not just about money. Digital platforms have become the biggest gateway to online information, attracting massive advertising revenue while publishers spend massive resources on reporting, editing and fact-checking.
Many media organisations across the world argue that tech companies benefit from journalism without fairly sharing the financial value it creates.
Australia became the first country to address this issue through its News Media Bargaining Code in 2021. The law encouraged commercial agreements between platforms and publishers, resulting in millions of dollars flowing into the news industry.
Indonesia now appears ready to follow a similar path, but with an added focus on AI, making it one of the first countries in Southeast Asia to directly include AI in its copyright law.
The proposed Indonesian law also makes it clear that fully AI-generated content will not receive copyright protection.
Only content created with meaningful human involvement will qualify. It further proposes that AI-generated content should be clearly disclosed and prohibits AI systems from copying a creator’s unique style.
These measures show that governments are now looking beyond traditional copyright disputes and are trying to prepare for the AI era.
