APRA AMCOS submission to the Joint Select Committee on AI
Not one major AI platform has asked to license copyright material in Australia in four years. They need to explain why.
Why are they refusing to enter into licensing arrangements for high-value creative content today?
In the four years since generative AI became publicly available, not one of the multinational AI platforms operating in Australia has approached APRA AMCOS to ask what a training licence would cost. Those same companies are seeking the ability to train in data centres here without first entering into licence agreements, on Australia and the world's intellectual property (IP).
In its submission to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, APRA AMCOS asks the Committee to put one question in writing to every AI platform, tech and business industry body appearing before it: Why are they refusing to enter into licensing arrangements for high-value creative content today?
"Multinational AI platforms are the most powerful companies the world has ever seen, and they are throwing that weight around to get the rules of the global IP market rewritten in their favour. Australia is where they've decided to start," APRA AMCOS CEO Dean Ormston says.
"The platforms are hoping that the promise of large-scale investment in Australia will be enough to change our laws, weaken the copyright framework and set a global precedent: that they never have to seek permission or pay for the creative content their commercial success depends on.
"They have found the money for nearly every lobbying firm in Canberra. They have found the money for data centres, power and Nvidia chips. But they have no intention of paying for the single most important ingredient in training and running a frontier large language model, which is creative content. And it isn't only Australia's IP they want. It's Australia and the world's IP, trained on in data centres here without a single licence agreement."
APRA AMCOS has been around for a century, established six months after the first radio broadcast in Australia, by music publishers who understood that a new technology had arrived that would use the work of songwriters. A hundred years later it licensed every technology since, from radio and cassette tape to downloads and streaming.
"We've been doing this for a hundred years, and we've watched plenty of technology companies arrive convinced the rules didn't apply to them," Ormston adds. "Radio worked it out. Television worked it out. The download stores, streaming services and social media platforms all worked it out and built businesses worth billions based on licences.”
APRA AMCOS now represents over 128,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers and last year distributed almost $700 million in royalties.
Licensing is not the obstacle the platforms claim. As of January 2026, there were at least 274 known commercial AI licensing agreements worldwide covering music, news, books, images and video, struck under copyright laws no more permissive than Australia's. None needed an exception in the law.
At the same time as the Joint Select Committee on AI held its first hearings this month, court filings were unredacted in The New York Times' case against OpenAI and Microsoft. A senior Microsoft executive described the companies' AI training practices as "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions," calling it perhaps the "largest theft of labor in human history." OpenAI's own leadership described its models as an "existential threat" to the creators whose work trained them.
"We have called this theft for four years. Now we know Microsoft's own executives were calling it the same thing in private," says Ormston.
More than 140 copyright lawsuits have now been filed against AI companies in the United States, making Australia a key destination for platforms seeking a safe haven for training. One major platform has tied a reported $21.6 billion of Australian data centre investment to copyright questions being settled in its favour.
The APRA AMCOS submission to the Joint Select Committee also asks the government to undertake steps to better understand the value of Australia's IP and copyright assets before it acts.
"We welcome the opportunity of AI and the potential dividend for the Australian economy," Ormston concludes. "But Australia's creative industries contribute economically, socially and culturally, and they must not be undervalued and sold off expeditiously."
The submission's seven recommendations also include a training data disclosure obligation on any model made available in Australia, a new cause of action against models built on infringing uses regardless of where the training took place, stand-alone Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property legislation with its digital and AI provisions brought forward, and a $500 million Commonwealth fund for investment in lawful, sovereign AI development in the creative sector.
