Indonesia's Draft Copyright Law 2026: Practical Guide for Tech, AI & Fintech Companies

Indonesia’s copyright law is undergoing the most significant overhaul since Law No. 28 of 2014 first codified the country’s modern intellectual-property framework, and the draft copyright law Indonesia’s government has tabled in 2026 carries direct operational consequences for every technology company, AI developer and fintech platform active in the Indonesian market. The proposed amendments introduce, for the first time, explicit provisions addressing AI-generated works, NFT and blockchain-recorded content, enhanced platform liability for digital content protection, and new royalty-reporting obligations, changes that collectively demand immediate attention from product, legal and compliance teams.

This guide breaks down each material provision of the draft, maps it to the decisions tech and fintech leaders must make now, and provides a step-by-step compliance checklist with sample contract clauses to accelerate implementation.

Executive Summary: What Indonesian Tech and Fintech Leaders Must Know

The draft amendment to Law No. 28 of 2014 on Copyright, commonly referred to as the RUU Perubahan UU Hak Cipta, touches every layer of a digital business operating in Indonesia. Before diving into the full analysis, here are the key decisions that in-house counsel and product leaders should put on the agenda immediately.

• AI-output ownership. The draft introduces a “human-involvement” test for copyright eligibility of AI-generated works. Companies using generative AI must determine whether their outputs qualify for protection and, if so, who holds the rights, the developer, the deployer, or the end-user.
• NFT and tokenized-content classification. Purchasing an NFT will not, by itself, constitute a transfer of copyright under the draft. Platforms facilitating NFT sales must update buyer disclosures and secondary-sale licence terms.
• Platform liability uplift. Hosting platforms and marketplaces face enhanced notice-and-takedown obligations, mandatory record-keeping, and potential liability for failing to act on notified infringement within prescribed timeframes.
• Royalty and remuneration reporting. The draft signals new obligations for platforms that distribute or make copyrighted content available to report usage data to collective management organisations (CMOs) and, industry observers expect, to facilitate real-time or periodic royalty settlements.
• User T&C and licensing overhaul. Existing terms of service, UGC licence grants, and API/model-training licence agreements almost certainly require revision to align with the draft’s expanded definitions and liability provisions.

Quick next steps for legal and product teams: Convene a cross-functional review within 30 days to audit existing IP policies, content-moderation workflows and licence agreements against the draft provisions summarised below. Prioritise the compliance checklist in the dedicated section of this guide.

How to Read the Draft: Legal Status and Legislative Timeline

What the Draft Copyright Law Indonesia Changes

The draft amendment proposes targeted revisions to approximately twenty articles of the existing Copyright Act (Law No. 28 of 2014), while inserting several entirely new provisions. The principal areas of change relevant to tech, AI and fintech companies are:

• A new chapter on works created with or by artificial intelligence
• Express provisions on digital assets, including NFTs and blockchain-based content records
• Strengthened digital content protection obligations for intermediary platforms
• Updated royalty-collection and remuneration-reporting mechanisms for digital distribution
• Revised enforcement powers and penalty ranges for online infringement

Where It Stands as of 26 May 2026

As of 26 May 2026, the draft has been formally submitted by the Government to the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR, House of Representatives) and is undergoing committee-level deliberation. The Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DJKI) within the Ministry of Law and Human Rights has published a public summary on its official portal. Early indications suggest that parliamentary deliberation may extend through the second half of 2026, with an implementing regulation (Peraturan Pemerintah) expected to follow within twelve months of enactment.

Companies should not wait for final enactment to begin compliance planning. The draft’s core principles, particularly on AI-generated works and platform obligations, reflect settled policy direction and parallel regulatory developments under the OJK’s AI governance framework for financial-services firms.

What the Draft Copyright Law Indonesia Changes: Detailed Legal Summary

AI-Generated Works: Definitions, Ownership and Licensing

Under the existing Copyright Act (Law No. 28 of 2014), copyright protection attaches automatically to “works” created by an “Author”, defined as a natural person whose creative effort produces a work in a distinctive form. The law does not contemplate non-human authorship. The draft amendment addresses this gap directly by introducing a framework for AI-generated works in Indonesia.

The proposed provisions establish a tiered approach:

• AI-assisted works, where a human author uses AI as a tool but exercises substantial creative control, remain eligible for full copyright protection, with the human recognised as Author.
• Autonomously generated works, where AI produces output with minimal human creative direction, receive a more limited form of related-rights protection (analogous to neighbouring rights), with the deployer or commissioner of the AI system designated as the initial rights-holder.
• Attribution and moral rights, the draft requires that works generated with material AI involvement carry a disclosure indicating AI participation, a provision that has immediate implications for content-labelling and product-design decisions.

For tech companies training and deploying large language models or generative-AI services in Indonesia, the practical effect is that contractual ownership clauses must now account for this tiered structure. A blanket assignment of “all intellectual property in outputs” may not capture the full rights bundle if the output qualifies only for related-rights protection rather than full copyright.

NFT Copyright Indonesia: Tokens, Underlying IP and Secondary Sales

The draft explicitly addresses the relationship between digital tokens and underlying copyrighted works, an area where the current law is silent. Under the proposed provisions, an NFT is treated as a record of transaction or certificate of authenticity, not as a transfer of copyright in the underlying work unless the parties expressly agree otherwise in writing.

This clarification carries three immediate consequences for platforms and fintechs dealing with NFT copyright in Indonesia:

• Buyer disclosures. NFT marketplaces must clearly disclose that purchasers acquire the token, not the copyright, unless a separate licence or assignment is included.
• Secondary-sale royalties. The draft contemplates a statutory right for original creators to receive remuneration on secondary sales of NFTs representing their works, building on the existing droit de suite principle in Article 26 of Law No. 28 of 2014.
• Smart-contract compliance. Platforms facilitating automated secondary sales via smart contracts must ensure those contracts embed or reference the applicable licence terms and royalty obligations.

Digital Content Protection Indonesia: Platform Obligations

The draft significantly strengthens the obligations imposed on digital intermediaries. Under the current law, platform liability for user-uploaded infringing content is addressed only in general terms. The amendment introduces a structured notice-and-takedown regime with prescribed response timeframes, mandatory content-identification measures for platforms exceeding defined user thresholds, and record-keeping obligations requiring platforms to maintain logs of takedown requests, responses and outcomes for a minimum retention period.

These provisions on digital content protection in Indonesia align with international trends, notably the EU’s Digital Services Act framework, but are tailored to Indonesia’s market structure, where social-commerce platforms and integrated fintech ecosystems play a dominant role in content distribution.

Royalties, Remuneration and Real-Time Payments for Digital Uses

The draft expands the role of Indonesia’s collective management organisations and introduces a reporting obligation for platforms that make copyrighted content available to the public. Industry observers expect the implementing regulation to require periodic, and potentially near-real-time, usage reporting, enabling CMOs to calculate and distribute royalties more efficiently. For platforms operating music-streaming, video-sharing, or content-syndication services, this means investing in usage-tracking infrastructure and data-sharing APIs compatible with CMO systems.

Practical Compliance Checklist for Copyright Law Indonesia: Tech, AI and Fintech

The following checklist is structured by implementation timeline. While the draft has not yet been enacted, the direction of reform is clear enough, and the lead-time required for operational changes long enough, that compliance for fintech Indonesia teams and tech-platform legal departments should begin now.

Immediate Actions (0–30 Days)

• Convene a cross-functional IP audit. Bring together legal, product, engineering and compliance teams to map all AI-generated content workflows, UGC ingestion points and NFT/digital-asset features against the draft’s key provisions.
• Inventory existing licence agreements. Identify all contracts that grant or receive rights to copyrighted content, including API terms, model-training data licences, content-syndication agreements and user T&Cs, and flag those that will require amendment.
• Assess content-moderation capability. Evaluate whether current notice-and-takedown processes meet the draft’s prescribed response timeframes. If response times are not currently tracked, begin logging immediately.
• Brief the board and senior leadership. Prepare a one-page risk summary highlighting potential liability exposure, required capital expenditure for compliance infrastructure, and recommended timeline for contract renegotiation.

Product, Model Training and Data Governance

Companies that train machine-learning models on data sourced from or distributed within Indonesia must address the draft’s implications for AI and copyright, including the line between training data use and infringement. Key steps include:

• Provenance logging. Implement or enhance systems that record the source, licence status and processing history of all training data. This documentation will be critical for demonstrating compliance and for IP due diligence in future M&A transactions.
• Output classification. Develop internal criteria for classifying AI outputs as “AI-assisted” (full copyright eligible) versus “autonomously generated” (related-rights only), aligned with the draft’s tiered framework.
• Disclosure labelling. Build product-level features to disclose AI involvement in content creation, in anticipation of the draft’s attribution requirement.

Content Ingestion and Moderation Systems

Platforms hosting user-generated content must prepare for the enhanced notice-and-takedown and content-ID obligations outlined in the draft. For companies already operating under mature content-moderation frameworks, the adjustment may be incremental. For newer or smaller platforms, the investment could be substantial. Recommended steps:

• Implement or upgrade automated content-identification technology (fingerprinting, hash-matching) for high-risk content categories.
• Establish a documented takedown-response playbook with assigned roles, escalation paths and target response times aligned with the draft’s prescribed timeframes.
• Deploy audit-logging infrastructure that records every takedown request, the action taken, the time elapsed and the outcome, stored for the minimum retention period the implementing regulation is expected to require.

Licensing and Rights Clearance

For companies that rely on user-uploaded content, third-party media libraries, or API-delivered content, the draft requires a fresh look at rights-clearance processes:

• Review UGC licence grants in user T&Cs to ensure they cover the expanded range of exploitation rights contemplated by the draft, including AI-related uses and cross-platform distribution.
• Audit API and model-licensing agreements for compliance with the draft’s new definitions, particularly where the licensed content may be used to train AI systems or generate derivative works.
• Where content is licensed from Indonesian creators or rights-holders, confirm that licence terms address the draft’s secondary-sale royalty provisions if that content may be tokenized as NFTs.

Contracts and User T&Cs: Required Clause Changes

The following sample clause snippets illustrate the types of revisions that in-house teams should consider. These are templates for discussion with local counsel and should be adapted to each company’s specific circumstances.

Sample Clause 1, AI-Output Ownership:

“Where Output is generated using the Company’s AI systems with substantial human creative direction by Client, Client shall be the Author and copyright holder of such Output under applicable law. Where Output is generated autonomously by the AI system without substantial human creative direction, the Company shall hold any related rights in such Output, and Client receives a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to use, reproduce and distribute the Output for the purposes specified in this Agreement.”

Sample Clause 2, UGC Licence Grant:

“By uploading Content to the Platform, User grants the Company a non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and make available the Content through the Platform and affiliated services, including for the purposes of content moderation, AI-assisted curation and compliance with applicable copyright law in Indonesia. This licence does not constitute a transfer of copyright.”

Sample Clause 3, Platform Indemnity Cap:

“Seller shall indemnify and hold harmless the Platform against any claims, losses or penalties arising from Seller’s distribution of digital assets (including NFTs) that infringe third-party copyright, up to a maximum aggregate liability equal to the total fees paid by Seller to the Platform in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim.”

Cross-Border Content: International Licences and Export Controls

Companies that license content into or out of Indonesia must assess how the draft’s provisions interact with their existing cross-border arrangements. The draft does not fundamentally alter Indonesia’s obligations under the Berne Convention or the WIPO Copyright Treaty, but the new platform-liability and royalty-reporting requirements apply to any platform making content available to users within Indonesia’s territory, regardless of where the platform is hosted. For a broader perspective on how to protect intellectual property across borders, companies should ensure that their international licence agreements specify governing law, dispute-resolution forum and compliance obligations for each jurisdiction.

Risk Allocation and Platform Liability Indonesia: Who Is Responsible?

Liability and Reporting Obligations by Entity Type

The draft’s impact on platform liability in Indonesia varies significantly depending on an entity’s role in the content ecosystem. The following table maps the principal obligation categories to entity types:

Insurance and Indemnities

Given the draft’s enhanced penalty structure and the expanded scope of platform liability, companies should review their existing technology errors-and-omissions (E&O) and intellectual-property liability insurance coverage. Industry observers expect that insurers operating in the Indonesian market will begin adjusting policy terms to reflect the new copyright-law landscape. Companies should confirm that their policies cover administrative sanctions (not only civil judgments), and that coverage extends to the costs of responding to regulatory investigations and mandatory record-production requests. Contractual indemnities between platforms and their content-uploading users or merchant partners should be updated to reflect the draft’s liability allocation.

Cross-Border Issues, Enforcement and Penalties Under Copyright Law Indonesia

Cross-Border Hosting and Extraterritorial Enforcement

The draft’s platform-obligation provisions apply to any entity that makes copyrighted content available to the public within Indonesia, regardless of where the entity is incorporated or its servers are located. This extraterritorial reach mirrors approaches adopted in the EU and other major markets but raises practical enforcement questions for platforms without a registered legal presence in Indonesia. The likely practical effect will be increased pressure on foreign platforms to appoint local representatives or registered agents, a step that companies entering or expanding in the Indonesian market should factor into their corporate-structuring decisions. For context on AI regulation in Indonesia more broadly, similar extraterritorial principles are emerging across the country’s technology-governance framework.

Penalties: Civil and Criminal Exposure

Under the existing Copyright Act (Law No. 28 of 2014), criminal penalties for commercial copyright infringement can include imprisonment of up to ten years and fines of up to IDR 4 billion. The draft proposes to supplement these penalties with a new tier of administrative sanctions specifically targeting platform non-compliance, including potential service-blocking orders for platforms that persistently fail to meet notice-and-takedown obligations. Civil remedies continue to include injunctive relief, damages and account-of-profits claims. The combination of criminal, civil and administrative exposure means that non-compliance with copyright law Indonesia’s evolving requirements carries material financial and operational risk.

M&A, Investments and IP Due Diligence Implications

The draft copyright law’s new provisions have direct implications for Indonesia intellectual property 2026 due diligence in M&A transactions and venture investments. Acquirers and investors targeting Indonesian tech companies, AI startups or fintech platforms should expand their standard IP due diligence to cover the following areas:

• Training-data provenance. Request documentation of all training data used in AI models, including licence terms, source records and any opt-out or takedown requests received.
• Content-moderation compliance history. Review the target’s takedown logs, response-time metrics and any past regulatory correspondence related to copyright complaints.
• Licence-agreement gap analysis. Assess whether the target’s existing licence agreements (inbound and outbound) adequately address the draft’s tiered AI-output ownership framework and NFT-related provisions.
• Escrow and holdback mechanisms. For transactions involving significant IP portfolios, consider escrow arrangements or contractual holdbacks to cover potential IP claims that may crystallise once the draft is enacted.
• Regulatory-risk disclosure. Ensure that transaction documents include representations and warranties covering compliance with Indonesia’s copyright-law requirements, including the draft’s prospective obligations where material.

For further guidance on the new Copyright Bill and its broader implications for rethinking copyright in Indonesia, companies involved in transactions should consult with local IP counsel familiar with both the existing law and the draft’s trajectory.

Practical Annexes and Tools

Sample Clause Bank

The three sample clauses provided earlier in this guide, covering AI-output ownership, UGC licence grants and platform indemnity caps, represent the minimum contract revisions most tech and fintech companies will need to implement. A comprehensive clause bank addressing additional scenarios (API licensing, white-label content distribution, co-development agreements and data-processing terms) should be developed with the assistance of qualified Indonesian IP counsel and tailored to each company’s product architecture.

One-Page Compliance Checklist

The following condensed checklist is designed for printing and distribution to cross-functional teams:

• Week 1: Convene cross-functional IP audit; identify all AI-output workflows and UGC ingestion points.
• Week 2: Inventory all active licence agreements; flag those requiring amendment.
• Week 3: Assess content-moderation capabilities against draft response-time requirements; begin logging takedown metrics.
• Week 4: Brief board and senior leadership; approve compliance-project budget and timeline.
• Months 2–3: Draft revised T&Cs, ownership clauses and indemnity provisions; begin contract renegotiation with key counterparties.
• Months 3–4: Implement or upgrade content-ID and audit-logging systems; test CMO data-reporting pipeline.
• Months 4–6: Complete contract rollout; conduct tabletop exercises for notice-and-takedown playbook; schedule follow-up audit for post-enactment compliance.

Where to Get Legal Help

Navigating the draft copyright law Indonesia’s new requirements demands specialist guidance at the intersection of intellectual property, technology regulation and financial-services compliance. Global Law Experts connects companies with Indonesian technology and IP lawyers who can advise on contract drafting, regulatory engagement and compliance-programme design. Firms seeking bespoke guidance on the draft’s implications for their specific products and operations should consult with qualified local counsel without delay.

Conclusion: Recommended Next Steps on Copyright Law Indonesia

The draft copyright law Indonesia has tabled represents a generational shift in how the country regulates digital content, AI-generated works and platform responsibility. While parliamentary deliberation continues, the policy direction is clear and the operational changes required are substantial enough that waiting for final enactment is not a prudent strategy. Tech, AI and fintech companies should begin the compliance process now: audit existing IP workflows, revise contracts and T&Cs, invest in content-moderation and royalty-reporting infrastructure, and engage qualified Indonesian IP counsel to navigate the transition. Companies that act early will not only reduce their legal exposure but will also be better positioned to compete in one of Southeast Asia’s largest and fastest-growing digital markets.

Sources

1. World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPOlex: Law No. 28 of 2014 on Copyright (Indonesia)
2. Direktorat Jenderal Kekayaan Intelektual (DJKI), Ministry of Law and Human Rights, Indonesia
3. Hukumonline PRO, Draft Copyright Law Analysis
4. SSEK Law Firm, Indonesia Proposes Overhaul of Copyright Law
5. Global Legal Insights, AI, Machine Learning & Big Data Laws: Indonesia
6. Law.asia, Indonesia AI Governance Framework
7. SKC Law, Copyright Protection in Indonesia