ABSTRACT
This article aims to describe new laws for the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Indonesia and the provision of public access to its inventories. Indonesia consists of various ethnic groups that each generate their own cultures and cultural heritages. Therefore, Indonesia is well-known and recognized as a rich and multicultural country. The problem of ICH is derived from the absence of regulating law to provide public access to its inventory. There are many reasons why a legal framework is urgently required to safeguard ICH. However, one of them is that it is needed to prevent the disappearance of hundreds of verbal languages. This research had been conducted using normative methods and legal terminology, reasoning and theory to present ideas ranging from the problem to the solution. In addition, the problem has also been addressed by using in-depth analysis to find an appropriate solution. From this research, I found that to safeguard Indonesian’s ICH, it is necessary to provide a new law to protect, exploit and digitize cultural heritage to create legal certainty in the digital era. I concluded that it is necessary to issue a national policy for safeguarding ICH in a set of regulations, and institutions are required to manage its protection and exploitation. Substantially, such proposed regulations may consist of some of the following points: 1) definition of ICH that has Indonesian character in the form of values, community norms, and traditions; 2) reflection of ICH by ethnic groups; 3) registration of ICH; 4) legal protection (especially through intellectual property regimes, computer law, and other laws); 5) commercial exploitation of ICH; 6) digitalization of ICH; 7) digital access to Indonesia’s ICH inventory; 8) infringements of ICH; 9) settlement of disputes; 10) amendments; 11) concluding clauses. From this conclusion, I recommend that a new law should be issued as soon as possible to protect ICH generated by various ethnic groups, and also to reshape and help the establishment of the national identity of Indonesia.
