Australia is facing a warning from the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) over proposals to adjust copyright law for artificial intelligence training, with the group saying AI has already used songs by Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave without permission or payment.
The ICMP says tech companies have asked dozens of countries to weaken copyright protections, but Australia is the only one seriously weighing such a change. ICMP Managing Director John Phelan described the move as one that would "legitimize larceny."
"They’re trying to strong-arm Australian policymakers into ‘if you don’t do this, we won’t invest’," Phelan said.
Pressure on copyright law#
AI models have already trained on copyrighted material in the United States without compensation for creators. In Australia, the same companies have withheld frontier AI models while current copyright law remains unchanged.
A joint letter to the prime minister from the inquiry’s Labor chair, Jo Briskey, and deputy chair, Senator Jonathon Duniam, recommended that the government re-examine current copyright law while ensuring creators retain control and receive compensation.
Global watch#
Phelan said 62 countries had considered legal changes, but none had agreed to AI companies’ demands. He pointed to an AI training dataset disclosed over the summer that contains more than 12 million songs scraped from YouTube, including hits by major Australian artists.
"There isn’t a single country among the other 61 [that] has introduced a new text and data mining exception for commercial purposes or reduced the idea of exclusive rights and copyright," said Phelan. "The world is very much watching what Australia does."
