“INFORMATION AND ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS” ACT AND THE IMPACT TOWARDS INDONESIAN ARTISTS
In this day and age, technology’s advancements are astounding. As such, criminal acts and radical movements also followed the evolution of the modern world. The term “cyber-crime” became popular, with felons committing their crime through the aid of electronic media; hate speech and vulgar acts had easier access to the eyes of internet users through social networks. All these negative remarks could be considered as the “dark-side” in the ever-growing technology.
Furthermore, the speed in which words travel is kept at minimum by using the internet; only limited by the bandwidth which varies between devices. This notion places a huge strain on the back of national security in each country, since they can be accessed anywhere, anytime, without knowing any international borders whatsoever. Thus each country made a regulation, with hope of filtering the contents of the internet and preventing the negative impact that it contains.
Given these considerations, Indonesia hastily put together an Act that regulates the use of electronic media. One of the considerations is the fast-paced growth and development of information technology (IT) causes a change in the daily-lives of humans, thus directly contributes in creating new forms of legal actions. These new forms of legal actions must be regulated immediately to prevent the misuse of technology. The Act came to be known as “UU ITE” for short. The scope in which its provisions provide legality to IT conducts are vast and broad, including (but not limited to) simple e-mails, texts, sounds, pictures, designs, photos, and even symbols.
The Act was upheld to fulfill its purpose: protection. To business owners, the provisions that hang within the articles in the Act served its original intentions. But to artists and writers, it’s a nightmare; it has the potential to mute the essence of both “freedom of speech” and “freedom of expression”. Article 27 of the Act states that “any act of distributing, transmitting, and/or giving access to Electronic Information with violations toward common decency is forbidden”.
The word “common decency” can be interpreted from various perspectives. With a variety of cultures and moral standards, it was hard to have a good grip on the meaning of the word. Everybody can now sue an artist that places a portrayal of a girl posing nude in one of his/her art, either in his/her exhibitions or internet profiles. The ideas that reside within the art are completely ignored, and people started to look Art differently, with “violation of common decency”—their common decency—being the cause.
(Am not including any images, but one can refer to Tara Basro's case as an example, back in 2020)
