Australia has taken a firmer stand on datacentres.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese just announced that datacentres in Australia will now be required to add as much electricity to the grid as it uses, and adhere to energy and water efficiency standards. He also announced the introduction of an ‘office of AI’ department in government.
But those who were hoping the announcement might also come with a decision around copyright and compensation for creators were still left in limbo.
In a speech at Sydney University, Albanese said the Government is working on a landmark solution to protect the rights of copyright holders – and their right to be paid for their work. But there is no indication of what this looks like or a timeline for these measures to be rolled out. In the meantime, generative AI engines are still churning through and ingesting our creative works without permission or compensation.
In 2025, the Australian Federal Government reaffirmed the rights of copyright holders against the threat of AI. In 2026, the future of the creative community feels less secure.
It was in October of 2025 that the Albanese Government ruled out the possibility of a text and data mining exception to copyright laws, essentially upholding the full rights of creators to their creative works – and that any commercial use of those works needs to be paid for. But, in most cases copyright holders are still not being paid and recent reports suggest that the Government could be reviewing this decision.
It is alleged that the Federal Government may be considering two proposals from AI tech giants, one of which has a copyright carve-out. Senator David Pocock confronted the Government about the issue in Parliament. He asked Industry and Science Minister Tim Ayres whether the claim was correct, the answer he received was not clear cut.
This warning signal has undeniably sent waves of concern through the creative community, who once again have rallied for the rights of creative works and creative people. ARIA and a group of creative minds including Mahalia Barnes and Jack River visited Parliament just a week later.
“I’m here at Parliament House today to urge our Government to hold the line and maintain copyright protections for artists,” said Barnes during a press conference at Parliament House.
“We wrote the music. We own it. We spent our whole life producing it,” said John Collins of Powderfinger. “Copyright is how we as artists and creators own our work.”
We’re currently at a precipice. One side, Australia has the opportunity to be a global leader in affirming and fighting for the rights of the creative community. But if we fall the wrong way, artists could end up as collateral damage on the pathway to profit-driving datacentre infrastructure.
Senator David Pocock has been consistently outspoken on the rights of creators to their works. Speaking exclusively to RUSSH, he said he believes in Australia’s ability to set the global standard for creator protections.
“The Australian Government actually has a proud history of standing up for artists,” said Pocock. “When we saw Napster, and BitTorrent leading to pirated music and pirated DVDs, the Government stepped up and worked with the industry.
“We need them to be on the front foot again and actually working with artists and forcing the AI companies to the table to negotiate,” he said.
It sounds cut and dry. Yet, the Australian Government – despite statements in support of artists – has yet to take a firm stance on any of the creative theft issues surrounding AI.
In fact, the only concrete decisions made have weakened our protections against this creative and economic threat. Prior to the most recent election, the Government spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars compiling a set of AI safety guidelines and an AI advisory body. The move was largely driven by former industry minister Ed Husic, who laid out a set of rules for “high-risk” AI. Both the safety guidelines and the advisory council were scrapped in December 2025 following a campaign involving tech billionaire Scott Farquhar and Big Tech industry group DIGI.
We’re currently at a precipice… if we fall the wrong way, artists could end up as collateral damage on the pathway to profit-driving data centre infrastructure.
Many major generative AI companies have already demonstrated that they are bad faith actors. This is not a novel concept. They have been chewing up copyrighted material for years to train their models without permission, perhaps simply hoping to not get caught. The creative community has been telling the world about this damaging practice since the very beginning, and taking what measures they can. ARIA has campaigned and visited parliament multiple times. The Atlantic has a full archive dedicated to highlighting stolen creative works. Some publishers in the UK are sending out invoices for each stolen article to the major Large Language Model (LLM) providers. Now, even other Big Tech companies are waking up to the swindle.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote a short essay explaining how generative AI is making us all pay twice. First we must pay for the service and the ‘tokens’ to power the model but, we all pay a second time when we feed our words, thoughts and proprietary knowledge into the model. Every time you place a passage for editing into an AI, every time you correct it when it’s wrong, every time you use it to refine your brainstormed ideas, you are feeding its intelligence with your own.
Nadella said: “In consuming intelligence, you are creating intelligence. And what you create should belong to you.”
We’re at a point where a safety framework – like the one the Government scrapped – has never been more important, despite what any productivity commission or industry group might argue. Navigating this new territory becomes precarious without rules. Senator Pocock told RUSSH, the current lack of guardrails is concerning.
“I don’t think the Government is doing the planning, looking at the impact, the disruption to society, the disruption to the workforce, what that means for our tax base.”
“These companies want to set up shop in Australia, and I think if they do that there should be really clear conditions around social license, energy and water use, and how we’re going to get a return via taxation and long-term benefit.”
Recent data showed that Australians are the biggest users of Anthropic per capita. Regardless of your moral stance on this issue, undeniably, generative AI infrastructure and data centre builds offer a number of economic opportunities for Australia. And as Australia looks for more investment from Big Tech and Large Language Models into this infrastructure, data mining exceptions seem to be the sticking point.
Sam Altman of OpenAI said that he believes copyright protects hinder AI innovation. Other LLM providers have claimed that much of the damage is already done, that the metaphorical horse has already bolted. And since they’ve already used copyrighted material to train their models that they should be allowed to continue. One of the most common arguments is that it would be too difficult of a process to pay creators, and that ‘fair use’ access to copyrighted works is essential to innovation.
Companies like Anthropic have even suggested paying into a fund for creatives, as a way to secure a copyright exemption and avoid having to negotiate with copyright holders. While the move was framed as an ‘olive branch’, ultimately, it is just another way out of fairly compensating creators.
If creative works are so essential to LLMs and their ability to innovate, surely that proves that these are a resource worth paying for. These are some of the richest and most valuable companies in the history of the modern world, ones that can certainly afford to fairly compensate for the creative resources they use.
“If the hype is true, that AI is going to change the world and lead to unparalleled abundance then pay the artists, pay the authors, pay the journalists.”
Without creative works at their core, LLMs could not exist. Senator Pocock says that he doesn’t “buy” the argument that fair compensation is too complicated.
“If the hype is true, that AI is going to change the world and lead to unparalleled abundance then pay the artists, pay the authors, pay the journalists,” said Pocock.
“Everyone knows that there are very good structures in place around copyright and the flow of payments for the use of that copyright,” he said. “Artists are not these unreasonable people who don’t want to negotiate, they do. They do want to negotiate.”
Australia has always been a leader on social policies around new technology. Yes, we were one of the first to take a stand against pirating music in the early 2000s. But even more recently, moves like the social media ban for under 16s has made the whole world take notice. Now, other countries are investigating a similar ban. In fact, the UK has already gone ahead with an under 16s ban, citing the Australian model as a reference.
If Australia takes a firm stance on the way generative AI can work with copyright holders, it paves the way for other countries to follow our lead. We could be part of setting a global precedent.
“If we don’t find a way to ensure that [artists] they’re compensated for the use of their work, and if we’re not willing to stand up to these big tech companies, we all lose.”
“These big tech companies know that if Australia is willing to stand up, then a bunch of other powers around the world will look at us and say, ‘we’re going to do the same’,” said Pocock.
There is no denying that the growing presence of generative AI in society requires a layered and nuanced conversation. But the particular issue of copyright protection should be clear cut. At the end of the day, we all need to ask ourselves: what happens to the arts if nothing changes? When I started my interview with Senator Pocock, one of the first questions I asked was ‘why do you personally care so much about this issue?’. His answer is one that all Australians need to hear.
“I care about Australian culture, I care about all the creatives who tell the story of where we’ve come from, who we are, where we’re going as a country,” said Pocock “If we don’t find a way to ensure that they’re compensated for the use of their work, and if we’re not willing to stand up to these big tech companies, we all lose.”
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