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August 14, 2025 14 mins

A few weeks ago, Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar addressed the National Press Club to discuss what he describes as the “next great industrial revolution”.

Singing the praises of the economic opportunity of artificial intelligence, Farquhar called on the government to loosen the rules – allowing AI models to train themselves using creative works, without paying for it.

Now, as Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the Productivity Commission focus on the potential billions AI could produce – there are questions about what it will mean for the future of creative work and journalism.

Today, principal at Good Company Law, Hannah Marshall, on the collision course between AI, art and the law. 


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Guest: Principal at Good Company Law, Hannah Marshall

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
To be honest on here a little or lucktont we
Over my career, I've always preferred doing rather than talking,
building things, solving problems, creating new new ventures, not giving
speeches about them.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
A few weeks ago, at Lassian co founder and one
of Australia's wealthiest men, Scott Parquha addressed the Press Club.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
But I'm here today because I believe Australia is standing
at the edge of the next great industrial revolution, one
powered to not by steam or electricity, but by artificial intelligence.
And like every revolution before it, the choices we make
now will shape not just our economy, but the kind
of country that we become.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Singing the praises of the economic opportunity of artificial intelligence,
Parqua called on the government to loosen the rules allowing
AI models to train themselves using creative works without paying
for it. Now, as the Treasurer and the Productivity Commission
talk about the potential billions AI could produce, there are
questions about what it will mean for the future of

(00:59):
creative work and journalism. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening
to seven am today. Principle at Good Company Law Hannah
Marshall on the collision course between the AI art and
the law. It's Friday, August fifteenth, Hannah. Let's begin our

(01:31):
conversation about AI and the creative industries with what we're
starting to see in terms of the broader impact on
anyone who makes a living making any kind of art
in Australia.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
The creative industries in Australia are on the cusp of
crisis and we're seeing increasing outcry from all of thurs
musicians and representatives of those industries about the fact that
these AI companies are basically coming and using their content,
deriving commercial value from that and not paying anything back

(02:03):
to these creatives, so they're not seeing any outside even
though their works are being used.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Nearly eleven thousand creatives put their name to a letter
that described the unauthorized use of their work by AI
as and I quote major and an unjust threat.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
We're seeing groups like Creative Australia come out and say
that they want to have principles for using their content
in generative AI for it framed around fairness and the
right to be remunerated. And we've also got prominent authors
like Critchard Flanagan calling this the biggest act of copyright
theft in history. His books, quite interestingly, were actually part

(02:42):
of the trove of books which were the subject of
a case against Meta in the US about whether they
had infringed copyright in those books by using them to
train their AI model.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
They accused Matter of illegally using their copyrighted works to
train its flagship generative EI model. But instead of the
declaration that Meta violated copyright law, the judge rule the
plaintiff's arguments weren't strong enough to move forward.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Odon And let's just spell out what is actually happening here.
So we're talking about AI companies basically scouring works of literature, articles,
news and using that material to train models to create
better AI. Is that right?

Speaker 3 (03:23):
So when the AI model ingests content, there's an underlying
technical question about whether it's making an actual copy of
the copyright content in the learning process.

Speaker 6 (03:37):
Everyone tends to assume that it is.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
And none of the AI companies are kind of loudly
coming out and saying that it doesn't. But that would
be the precursor to the copyright infringement happening if it's
not making a copy of it or reproducing a substantial
part of the book or the song or whatever it
is it's learning from, then there wouldn't be a copyright infringement.
But we're not seeing that argument being seriously thrown out

(04:00):
by the AI companies, and so for the most part,
people are assuming that it must be some form of
reproduction and therefore there's a potential for infringement absent some
defense applying.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
And that, I suppose brings me to my next question.
Is this breaking the law what these companies are doing
or is this a gray area?

Speaker 3 (04:20):
A look, if it's reproducing it, then that's a copyright
infringement unless a defense applies. And so that's kind of
the bottom line. Under Australian law, we've got quite a
narrow set of defenses, and so it's not clear that
there is an obvious defense that the AI companies could
rely on other than saying there was no infringement in

(04:41):
the first place.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
So if that is the case, tell me a bit
more than about how the AI companies are currently justifying
what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
So last week Scott Farqua, the co founder of Lassian,
came out quite loudly saying that copyright laws in Australia
are holding at the growth of an AI industry here
and that we need to change the laws urgently to
facilitate the growth of the industries.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
We remain an outlier when it comes to copyright, so
this is a barrier to AI companies who want to
train or host their models in Australia.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Specifically, what he wants is a new exception to our
copyright laws for text and data mining.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
So my first ask today of government is for the
Attorney General to urgently amend our Copyright Act to work
at fair use and text and data mining exceptions. Fixing
this one thing could unlock billions of dollars of foreign
investment in Australia.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
And just as Scott Farqua, who is a billionaire, called
for looser rules, we have the Productivity Commission release a
paper arguing for the same thing. So what is their
case in favor of this?

Speaker 3 (05:53):
The Productivity Commission, we're very loud and clear on the
money to be made in short and the jobs to
be gained from a growing AI industry in Australia. They
said it could boost productivity by between point five and
thirty percent over the next decade, which could be hundreds
of billions of dollars.

Speaker 6 (06:13):
So it's a.

Speaker 7 (06:14):
Lot Artificial intelligence is a game changer for our economy.
It has the potential to support all of our major
economic goals, making our economy more productive, stronger, lifting living
standards over time.

Speaker 8 (06:29):
And Charmers came out last week as well talking about
how artificial intelligence will completely transform our economy and he
said that the government's intention is to regulate as much
as is necessary to protect.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Australians, but as little as possible to encourage innovation.

Speaker 7 (06:48):
The only way to make our people and workers and
industries beneficiaries is if we treat AI as an enabler,
not an enemy of what we want to see in
our economy. That means listening to people.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
But it's interesting that the you know, when other governments
are exploring and reporting on AI, for the most part,
they're focusing on how do we minimize harm from the
AI industry, whereas this report it's really talking about how
do we take away the regulatory hurdles so that it's
easier for the AI industry to come here and use
our creative's content. I mean, there's this really strong common

(07:27):
thread about the desire to unlock the benefits of the
AI industry, and you know, the creative industries are understandably
really concerned that they'll be railroaded in all of this
excitement about AI jobs and money, and looking at it globally,
what you can see is that it's really hard to
strike the good balance between the opportunity of the industry

(07:50):
which is undeniable, but also protecting creative industries. And the
risk is that because it's hard to strike that balance,
that it will be done badly or.

Speaker 6 (08:00):
Not at all.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Coming up, authors versus the tech giants battle it out
in court, Hannah, let's talk about how this is playing
out in other countries, specifically the US, where a lot
of these AAR companies are based. What are we seeing

(08:24):
happen in court so over.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
In the US, they have a broad exception to copyright
infringement for fair use, and that's been tested already in
cases against Meta and Anthropic in relation to books. And
it's the cases that I mentioned before, which included Richard Flanagan's.

Speaker 6 (08:42):
Works, and the issue there was.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
That a trove of one hundred and eighty five thousand
books had been used to train the AI models, and
you know, from the author's perspective, that was rampant example
of copyright infringement applying the fair use defense in the US,
the court ultimately decided that it wasn't a copyright infringement,

(09:05):
and the reason was that it wouldn't impact the downstream
sale of those books.

Speaker 6 (09:13):
So the AI.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Models were in jesting the book content, but they weren't
spitting it out again. So you couldn't go on to
say chat GPT and say give me a copy of
Richard Flannagan's latest book.

Speaker 6 (09:26):
It would say no. So because the training wasn't being.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Used to create a copy of the work, the court's
decision was that it wasn't an unfair use of their work,
and as such, the copyright infringement claims fail.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Okay, So if we are to accept the argument that
AI might be using this intellectual property making money off it,
but that doesn't necessarily impact someone still going ahead and
buying it for themselves, how does that apply when we
think about nonfiction, when we think about journalism and news.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah, I think the analysis starts to change significantly when
you look at nonfiction, but particularly news, because the value
of those works is largely in the information they're conveying
rather than necessarily the specific words used to do that.
And so that means that, you know, using that US

(10:27):
legal analysis in the books case, you might get a
different outcome because if AI goes and ingests all of
the seven am podcast library, all of the Sydney Morning Herald,
it could spit out competing content and people could quite
naturally use the AI tools to access and get news

(10:49):
or nonfiction information from them in a way that does
impact the market for the news publishers. And so that's
the reason that I think AI is presenting almost an
existential threat to the news industry.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
So, Hannah, if you wanted to both chase the economic
opportunity of AI while protecting the creative industries, what do
you think a good model that could do both would look.

Speaker 6 (11:15):
Like In terms of legal protections.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
At the moment in Australia, the current copyright laws do
seem to create a degree of protection for creatives and
that's what far Class A arguing against is that there
does seem to be a standing assumption that there is
an infringement in which case the AI companies have to
buy a license. You know, that still seems like a
reasonable outcome. If we were to go further though, and

(11:42):
create a new law which mandates payment, that might add
additional protection for the creative industry, but you would need
to be really careful about unintended consequences, and we've seen
that play out before with well intentioned legislation in the
form of the News Media Bargaining Code. Because deals which
facilitated payment by digital platforms through to the news companies

(12:05):
were not transparent, they didn't cover the whole industry, they
weren't renewed, and ultimately, to avoid being caught by the law,
Meta exited the news industry and Australia altogether, which was a.

Speaker 6 (12:18):
Long way from the desired outcome of the law.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
People like Scott Farquha are saying Australia's copyright laws are
a barrier to growth.

Speaker 6 (12:28):
Of the AI industry.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
But that hasn't really been examined in detail. I can't imagine,
given the funding and the revenue of these massive AI companies,
that the cost of licensing the content that they're ingesting
would be crippling or prohibitive. Nobody's really spelled out in
detail why the AI companies can't just pay for a license,

(12:52):
and that's the thing that really strucks me about all
of this.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Anna, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 6 (12:58):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Also in the news today, salmon farming and Tasmania's Marcory
Harbor will continue. The Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt has
confirmed environmental groups, including the Bob Brown Foundation, had lodged
a request for the government to reconsider its twenty twelve
decision to allow for the expansion of salmon farming, citing
concerns about the impact on the endangered Morgians skate. In

(13:29):
a letter to three environment groups, Minister Watt said his
decision to allow salmon farming to continue had considered all
the evidence and that the government is committed to protecting
the endangered animal. And Donald Trump has threatened very severe
consequences if Vladimir Putin doesn't agree to a cease fire
at their upcoming meeting in Alaska. Speaking after a call

(13:49):
with European leaders, including Ukrainian President FLOTMW. Zelenski and Britain's Kiirstarmer,
President Trump said that if his meeting with Putin goes well,
Hill followed up quickly with another the meeting, bringing together
Putin and Zelenski. Trump earlier raised concerns when he said
he would discuss land swapping with Putin Zelenski has ruled

(14:09):
out seeding territory to Russia. Seven Am is a daily
show from Softstice Media. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Chris Dengate,
Daniel James, Sarah McPhee, Travis Evans, Zotenfetcho, and me Ruby Jones.
Our theme music is by Nede Beckley and Josh Hogan
of Envelope Budeo. Thanks for listening, have a great weekend,
See you Monday.
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