The respective CEOs of both ARIA and APRA AMCOS have got comments made by Scott Farquhar in their sights, issuing responses to his call for pro-AI copyright overhaul.
The comments in question were made by the Atlassian co-founder at the The Australian Financial Review AI Summit on Tuesday, where he stated that urgent reform is needed so that tech companies can train their AI models on local content, lest it cause a reversal in funds coming into the local economy.
“There is no way for someone to train a model in Australia and say, ‘I’m just going to cut a deal with five media companies in Australia’, or cut a deal with Australian recording artists,” Farquhar was reported as saying.
“We need to sort this as soon as possible because data centres will go elsewhere, and it’ll be a very sad day.”
However, this is not a sentiment shared by the heads of Australian music’s most prominent organisations.
ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd was the first to hit back, issuing a statement on Tuesday afternoon in which she claimed that Farquhar is “selling out Australian creators,” and that “in doing so he’s making it blatantly obvious he has no idea how copyright law and the licensing market work.”
“Mr Farquhar’s claim that you can't train AI in Australia without signing a deal with every recording artist on earth is nonsense,” she explained.
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“The music industry is built on global licensing deals done efficiently and at scale. You could license around 80% of the world’s sound recordings to train AI globally – including in Australia – with four deals: one with each major record label, and one with Merlin, a global organisation that represents independent record labels (including Australian independent labels like Mushroom Music).
“Global AI licensing deals between AI and technology companies and major and independent record labels are already happening. You don't need a million signatures.”
As Herd continued, she claimed that Farquhar seemingly wants to “rip up the Berne Convention,” which has been “the foundation of the international copyright system” since the late 1880s, and since Australia signed on in 1928.
“If this is indeed the smartest technology presented in human history, it makes no sense as to why it deserves exemptions that no technology before has required to be successful,” Herd continued.
She added
But Scott Farquhar wants the Albanese Government to ignore the facts and carve Australia out of the global licensing framework for AI use, by handing over free and full access to Australia’s music, books, films, art, First Nations culture, and journalism for AI companies to monetise and exploit however they choose without permission or fair payment.
A country that is home to one the world's great creative and media cultures – worth $67 billion annually – will not rewrite its copyright laws on the advice of the people who stand to profit most from dismantling them. Mr Farquhar, you do not decide how to monetise or use an artist’s music for AI. That is the prerogative of the artist and copyright owner. Just like tech companies decide who uses their products and what they pay for it.
Additionally, APRA AMCOS CEO Dean Ormston joined the conversation on Wednesday echoing Herd’s comments.
"Every few months, Scott Farquhar discovers that Australian copyright law exists, as it does in over 180 other countries,” Ormston began. “Every few months, Australia's songwriters, composers, authors and artists explain why that's a feature, not a bug.
"Now Scott Farquhar says it's 'impossible' to train AI in Australia under existing copyright law. That's simply not true.
"APRA AMCOS has 100 years of licensing experience,” he added. “We have licensed radio, television, streaming platforms and social media, and every new technology as it has arrived in Australia. We know how to do business. We want to do business.”
Calling Farquhar’s data centre argument a “distraction”, Ormston labelled the copyright argument a “negotiating position” and placed the blame upon AI platforms themselves rather than a supposed lack of copyright provisions.
"The issue isn't the law,” he explained. “It's that the major AI platforms don't want to pay. Not one has made a genuine attempt to come to the table, engage with rights holders, or explore what a fair commercial negotiation might look like.
He continued:
The content that drives the value of these models is not blog posts or social media commentary. It is the highest quality catalogued creative work, the songs, the scores, the novels, the screenplays, built by professional creators over careers and lifetimes. That is what they keep coming back for. And that is precisely what Australia's copyright framework is designed to protect.
Instead, what we are seeing is a coordinated attempt to decouple payment from copyright rights altogether. The proposal doing the rounds, a one-off fund distributed as a goodwill gesture in exchange for closing off any ongoing licensing obligation, is not a licensing framework. It is a receipt for a robbery. Creators would go from being licensors to being mendicants. That is not a settlement. That is a surrender the creative sector will not accept.
The window Mr Farquhar is worried about closing? Don't blame the law. Don't blame creators. The AI industry has had every opportunity to negotiate, to engage, and to treat Australian creators as partners rather than a cost to be avoided. They have chosen not to. That is not a legal problem. That is a choice.
Farquhar has not commented publicly on the topic any further, or responded to Herd or Ormston’s own responses, since his appearance at the The Australian Financial Review AI Summit.
