AI companies want to water down Australia’s copyright laws. Artists are outraged, Labor is split

So Australia's Prime Minister Albanese is set to deliver a 'landmark AI speech'—which, if past form is anything to go by, will be a carefully worded invitation for tech giants to help themselves to everyone else's work. The real action is the proposed watering down of copyright laws to let AI companies scrape content without payment or permission. Artists, predictably, are outraged; Labor, just as predictably, is split between those who remember they represent people and those who've been told 'innovation' means handing over the country's cultural output to Silicon Valley.

This isn't a copyright debate—it's a shakedown dressed up as policy. The message is clear: if you've ever written, painted, or filmed something, your work is now raw material for someone else's profit machine. And the split in Labor? That's the sound of politicians trying to figure out which way the money blows before deciding their principles. One faction mutters about 'fair use' and 'competitiveness,' the other feebly mentions 'artists'—but we all know who's got the better lobbyists.

The real joke is that 'landmark' speech almost certainly won't mention that the AI companies could pay a pittance and nobody would go broke. Instead, we'll get a soaring vision of Australia as an 'AI hub' while the actual creators get a polite footnote about 'transitional support.' Copyright is becoming a suggestion, not a right. But hey, at least the datacentres will be full of stolen property—that's infrastructure, that is.