AI companies urged to pay up or stay out of Australia
The Digital Publisher Alliance says Australia should stand firm against powerful AI companies trying to bend the country’s copyright laws and not allow bosses who won’t pay for stolen works into parliament.
Alliance president Tim Duggan issued the advice at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, while also calling for a moratorium on government advertising with foreign tech giants and tax breaks to support local news providers.
He said the aid would be critical to support the vulnerable industry, which remains under threat from a growing number of aggressive technology companies.
Their calls come following recent job cuts at organizations including Southern Cross Media and Punkee, and two months after the federal government announced plans to create a News Dealing Incentive scheme to raise funds from digital platforms to pay media.
Despite the announcement, Mr Duggan said Australia’s media industry remained at risk from three main sources: big tech firms, government paralysis and public trust.
While Meta and Google’s actions have dominated debates about online news consumption for years, AI companies now pose a significant additional threat as they consume news content without paying for it, he said.
He said Anthropic’s Claude AI model extracts 24,000 pages of content for every referral sent back to publishers, representing a broken system.
“We need strong assurances from the government that Australia’s rock-solid and well-established copyright system will not be sacrificed for the sake of a few false gods of AI,” he said.
“We should not invite any (AI) CEOs to parliament without first demanding compensation for the Australians whose work they have stolen.”
Mr Duggan said the federal government should also prioritize the rollout of the News Bargaining Incentive scheme and ensure small, independent publications are not left out of the funding pool.
He said Australian media organizations would also benefit from a freeze on government advertising spending with tech giants such as Meta and a tax offset scheme for journalists’ salaries similar to those seen in other sectors such as film and video game production.
“Most of these are common sense, and many of them do not require additional funding,” he said.
Squiz Media chief executive Claire Kimball said discussions about the state of the news media could easily turn negative, but with the right settings Australia could support a healthy and beneficial industry.
“There’s no reason why Australian media shouldn’t be very commercially successful and successful,” he said.
“The important thing is to make sure there is a level playing field so that we have a chance at commercial success.”
