Australia is being used to sell out the world’s creators
Annabelle Herd appears before Joint Select Committee on Artificial intelligence
The world’s music, books, journalism, films, photographs and other copyright material published online would be put at risk under proposals designed to attract OpenAI and Anthropic to train their AI models in Australia, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
Appearing before the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, ARIA and PPCA CEO Annabelle Herd represented Australian recording artists, international artists and local and international record labels and distributors.
Ms Herd warned that changing Australia’s copyright laws to accommodate OpenAI and Anthropic could make Australia the Trojan horse for Big AI – the global safe haven for industrial-scale copyright exploitation – allowing AI companies to pursue trillions of dollars in profits at the expense of every copyright holder in the world.
Under the principle of national treatment, Australia protects overseas works under Australian law just as other countries protect Australian works. Any compensation scheme would therefore also need to recognise overseas rights holders and could not operate as a fund exclusively for Australian artists.
Ms Herd told the Committee: “OpenAI and Anthropic want the Australian Government to sign up to a deal to train their frontier AI agents here on the proviso that they don’t have to abide by our copyright laws.
“Their reason? The world’s richest and most advanced companies say it would be too costly and complex to work with rights holders,” Ms Herd said.
“This concept that the status quo isn’t working is being used as an argument by AI companies to change our copyright law. You don’t address a systemic problem of mass piracy by changing the law to legalise that piracy on an ongoing basis.
“In Australia, we have a very clear system where, if you can’t rely on a fair dealing exception, you can’t copy. The law is very certain. It is very simple for these companies to come to us and say, ‘We’d like to license your content.’ They should come to the negotiating table, not to the Prime Minister’s office,” Ms Herd continued.
“ARIA and PPCA are not against these companies doing their frontier training in Australia. We understand why that is beneficial, but it should happen on our terms, not theirs. There is nothing less sovereign than rewriting our laws to suit foreign company commercial interests.
“Done the way that Big AI is proposing, it would devastate the music industry and make Australia a pariah for rights holders globally.
“To me, this seems to be a deliberate strategy by the AI companies. They’re open in saying they won’t license here because it could impact their US lawsuits. But the converse is also true. If we go down a path and declare that there’s no licensing market – Australia deciding to upend the global licensing market and say there isn’t one – then that will assist them in their US lawsuits and I’m not sure why that’s in Australia’s interests,” Ms Herd said.
“The global music industry already has efficient licensing systems capable of licensing 90 per cent of the world’s sound recordings through four global deals: one with each major label and one with Merlin, representing independent labels.“There is clearly no market failure, just two foreign companies, each valued at over U$1 trillion, asking Government for a free ride.”
Image: PPCA CEO Annabelle Herd