Legal uncertainty in copyright law: The Disharmony of Creators’ Economic Rights, from a Natural Law Perspective

Abstract

This article examines how the normative disharmony between Article 9 and Article 23 of Law Number 28 of 2014 concerning Copyright breeds systemic legal uncertainty for
commercial music industry stakeholders in Indonesia, particularly concert promoters, event organizers, and performers. Utilizing a normative legal research method with statutory, conceptual, case, and philosophical approaches, this study analyzes the landmark case of Ari Bias v. Agnes Mo (Decision Number 92/Pdt.SusHKI/Cipta/2024 and Supreme Court Decision Number 825 K/Pdt.Sus-HKI/2025) and the Constitutional Court Decision Number 28/PUU-XXIII/2025, alongside the institutional failure of royalty distribution within LMKN (National Collective Management Organization) practices. The natural law theories of Aquinas, Grotius, Hutcheson, Hume, Locke, and Pufendorf serve as the evaluative framework. This article finds that the coexistence of direct licensing and blanket licensing without a clear normative hierarchy creates unresolved legal risks for business actors and violates the principle of suum cuique tribuere. The contribution of this article lies in its normative analysis from a copyright law perspective, demonstrating that
the disharmony of copyright norms is not merely a philosophical issue but a tangible barrier to business certainty in the commercial music industry, while concurrently offering a direction for reformulation in the Draft Copyright Law.