Meta and TikTok lined up alongside Google at an Indonesian parliamentary hearing on Wednesday to argue against planned revisions to the country’s copyright law, Reuters reports from Jakarta.

The bill would require digital platforms to compensate publishers for displaying news content and would set rules for AI. If it passes, Indonesia would become the first country in Southeast Asia to fold AI into its copyright law, according to Reuters, which first reported the draft in July.

Google’s Indonesia government affairs manager, Agung Pamungkas, told lawmakers that making platforms pay for showing links to news would end up limiting Indonesians’ access to it.

Meta’s public policy head in Indonesia, Berni Moestafa, argued the measure would backfire on its intended beneficiaries: “publishers could lose readership traffic as well as potential advertising and subscription revenue,” he told the hearing, adding that directing readers to an article is different from republishing it.

TikTok took aim at the AI provisions. Its Indonesia policy chief, Noudhy Valdryno, said disclosure requirements should not apply where AI merely assists rather than fully creates content, and urged lawmakers to preserve safe-harbour protections, since platforms cannot reliably determine who owns a copyright or holds a licence.

The arguments are well worn. Platforms made the same case against Australia’s news bargaining code and Canada’s Online News Act, where Meta chose to block news entirely rather than pay. Indonesia itself already pushed platforms toward publisher deals with a 2024 presidential regulation; the new bill would harden that into copyright law.

The AI layer is what makes Jakarta’s version novel. While news publishers and rights holders fight AI companies case by case in US courts, from the Gemini lawsuit to the unresolved fair use question, Indonesia is proposing to settle the rules in statute first.

That is precisely what the platforms are trying to head off. A copyright law that defines AI obligations in the world’s fourth most populous country would hand every other legislature in the region a template.