Publisher's rights are rules that require digital platforms to provide economic value to news content from local and national media. With the regulation, media will receive a kind of royalty on content that is published and shared widely on digital platforms such as social media, search engines, and news aggregators. Digital platforms such as Google, Facebook, X, and others are required to pay local media outlets whose content is linked to their search results or news feeds.
In his explanation, President Joko Widodo said that the Presidential Regulation on Publisher's Rights does not mean that the Indonesian government is regulating press content. According to him, the government regulates business relations between press companies and digital platforms in the spirit of improving quality journalism. The president emphasized that the government wants to ensure the sustainability of the national media industry as well as fairer cooperation between press companies and digital platforms.
On the media side, the presidential regulation will probably benefit press companies economically. However, it remains to be seen whether it will also benefit the wider community, including digital platforms and their users.
One of the internet's largest platforms, Google, for example, has responded to the presidential regulation since it was still in draft form, on July 25 last year. As quoted by tempo.co, Google said that it would no longer display news content on its platform if this regulation is enacted. Google has also done something similar in Australia and Canada. If Google does that, then Google's search engine will not display content originating from Indonesian media publishers.
Besides losing reader traffic, media publishers also have the potential to lose tens to hundreds of thousands of US dollars in revenue, due to reduced advertising. Without digital search engines, people would also find it difficult to get balanced news about certain issues, due to limited access to various media. Hopefully, that doesn't happen.
The aim of the Presidential Regulation on Publisher Rights is fair cooperation between digital platforms and media publishers. If this cooperation mechanism can be agreed upon, publishers' rights will be guaranteed and the wider public will be able to enjoy a variety of quality and balanced information, with the presence of digital platforms that help disseminate them. (Trans & Post: Rama)