Progressive copyright theory: Critique of music performing rights regulation in the digital era

This article examines the governance of authors' performing rights in platform-mediated live streaming environments within the digital music ecosystem. The study addresses the regulatory uncertainty arising from the interaction between authors’ performing rights, communication to the public, and making available rights, particularly in relation to licensing obligations, royalty allocation, collective management, and platform responsibility. Employing a doctrinal legal research methodology, the article combines statutory, conceptual, and functional comparative approaches to analyse international copyright instruments and the copyright regimes of the United States, Germany, Spain, Belgium, and Indonesia. The findings demonstrate that, although digital dissemination is already recognised through communication to the public and making available rights, existing copyright frameworks remain insufficiently coordinated to govern the hybrid characteristics of platform-mediated live streaming. The study further reveals that Indonesia lacks an express regulatory framework capable of ensuring coherent licensing, transparent remuneration, and clear platform accountability in live streaming environments. In response, the article develops a contextual platform-mediated performance rights governance framework grounded in progressive copyright theory, integrating licensing coordination, royalty transparency, collective management reform, platform accountability, and state supervision. The proposed framework contributes to the reconstruction of Indonesian copyright law by providing a normative and comparative basis for balancing the interests of authors, digital platforms, collective management organisations, and the public within the streaming economy.