{"id":11143,"date":"2026-07-16T07:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/icmp-welcomes-australian-governments-landmark-statement-on-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:10:07","slug":"icmp-welcomes-australian-governments-landmark-statement-on-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/icmp-welcomes-australian-governments-landmark-statement-on-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"ICMP Welcomes Australian Government\u2019s \u2018Landmark\u2019 Statement on AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tSYDNEY, Australia \u2014 The Australian prime minister\u2019s assurances that tech and AI companies can\u2019t use copyright-protected works including consent, credit and compensation has been warmly welcomed by the international music publishers community.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier, on Wednesday, prime minister Anthony Albanese<\/strong> addressed AI in a presentation at the University of Sydney, with a speech that left no doubt about the government\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cNo company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist\u2019s control.\u00a0That includes the artist\u2019s control of the price and value of their work,\u201d he remarked. \u201cAnything less, is theft.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThose comments put at ease an industry nervous that copyright projections could be carved out by a tech sector hungry to use music and creative works for AI purposes without licenses.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat won\u2019t happen, Albanese insists. And the \u201cimplications are global,\u201d notes John Phelan<\/strong>, director general of the Brussels-based International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), which represents 90% of the world\u2019s commercially released music and whose members include Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, BMG, Kobalt, Reservoir and Concord Music Publishing, alongside thousands of other indie publishers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur international industry fully agrees\u201d with Albanese\u2019s stance, Phelan adds, \u201cand looks forward to continuing to build only those AI and music markets which are built wholly on consent, credit and compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tICMP\u2019s Australasian affiliate AMPAL had lobbied against text and data mining exceptions, and signed the creative\u00a0industries\u2019\u00a0Open Letter to Government<\/a>, along with ARIA, AIR, APRA AMCOS and other trade bodies and artists, calling on the federal government to reject any weakening of copyright protections.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAustralia holds something no other country possesses: more than sixty thousand years of First Nations culture,\u201d reads the AI Open Letter. \u201cThose songs, stories, images and languages are living cultural heritage. Any framework that weakens the protection of creative work puts that heritage at risk of being absorbed into AI systems in ways that are extractive, disrespectful and irreversible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMembers from the association and other industry bodies visited Parliament House in Canberra earlier this month, in a united effort to get the message through. \u201cIf\u00a0AI\u00a0companies want to use music, they need permission, they need a license and they need to pay fairly,\u201d AMPAL\u00a0CEO Damian Rinaldi<\/strong> said at the time.\u00a0\u201cLicensing is already working. Australia should not weaken copyright to solve a problem the market is already solving.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlbanese agreed. And despite lobbying from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella<\/strong>, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei<\/strong>, Google and others, the government rejected the tech sector requests that music be used without permission, and pushed back on proposals for a fund for the use of creative industries\u2019 work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his speech this week, Albanese remarked that Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists \u201cmust retain ownership and control of their work,\u201d and that \u201cour laws will spell that out, plain as day.\u201d At the same time, Albanese announced the create of an \u201cOffice of AI,\u201d operating within the department of prime minister and cabinet and facilitate the design of \u201cAustralian standards\u201d for the technology.<\/p>\n

\n\tAustralia\u2019s industry leaders have welcomed Albanese\u2019s comments, while the ICMP\u2019s Phelan thanked the the PM for delivering a \u201clandmark and highly positive statement\u201d on the issue.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe prime minister\u2019s speech \u201cAI in Australia\u2019s interests\u201d can be read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SYDNEY, Australia \u2014 The Australian prime minister\u2019s assurances that tech and AI companies can\u2019t use copyright-protected works including consent, credit and compensation has been warmly welcomed by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2032,1361,8239,2426,1333,7667],"class_list":["post-11143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-australian","tag-governments","tag-icmp","tag-landmark","tag-statement","tag-welcomes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}