The International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) has urged Australia to resist technology companies seeking weaker copyright rules for AI (artificial intelligence) training.
The organisation says music by Australian artists including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave has already been used to train AI without permission or payment.
Pressure over copyright rules
ICMP managing director John Phelan said technology companies had approached “dozens of countries” about relaxing copyright protections, but Australia appeared to be the only country seriously considering doing so.
Phelan said such changes would “legitimize larceny,” and accused companies of using investment as leverage in discussions with Australian policymakers.
“They’re trying to strong-arm Australian policymakers into ‘if you don’t do this, we won’t invest’,” said Phelan.
AI models have been trained on copyrighted material in the United States without compensating creators. The same companies have withheld frontier AI models in Australia pending changes to its copyright laws.
Calls to retain creators’ control
In a joint letter to the prime minister, the inquiry’s Labor chair, Jo Briskey, and deputy chair, Senator Jonathon Duniam, recommended reviewing copyright law while preserving creators’ control and compensation.
Phelan said 62 countries had considered legal changes, but none had accepted AI companies’ demands.
He said none of the other 61 countries had introduced a new commercial text and data mining exception or weakened exclusive rights and copyright protections.
“The world is very much watching what Australia does,” said Phelan.
He also cited an AI training dataset disclosed over the summer containing more than 12 million songs scraped from YouTube, including hits by major Australian artists.
