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Australia’s AI copyright fight landed in a parliamentary hearing this week, and for once, the creatives had a microphone.

ARIA chief Annabelle Herd told the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence that artists face becoming “roadkill” if the government hands AI companies a copyright carve-out. Not a metaphor she reached for lightly. The recording industry represents musicians, labels, and distributors whose entire income depends on the legal principle that copying someone’s work without permission costs something.

Herd’s bigger warning was about scale. Australia, she argued, is being used as a “Trojan horse.” Copyright law operates on national treatment: if you protect overseas work under Australian law, other countries return the favour. Change the rules here, and you’ve effectively changed them globally. OpenAI and Anthropic aren’t just asking for a local carve-out. They want a precedent they can point to in their US lawsuits, where the real money is.

She was blunt about that: “They’re open in saying they won’t license here because it could impact their US lawsuits. But the converse is also true. If we go down a path and declare that there’s no licensing market… that will assist them in their US lawsuits and I’m not sure why that’s in Australia’s interests.”

That’s the sharpest thing said at any AI hearing in Australia this year.

The tech companies showed up with a familiar argument. Google’s government affairs manager told the committee that an opt-in regime (where AI companies must ask permission before training on content) would make AI development “impossible.” OpenAI said they weren’t asking for anything “specifically for consideration.”

Both statements are worth sitting with.

Google’s position is that asking creators for permission is too hard. The Australian Writers’ Guild’s position is that asking for permission is exactly the point. Not just compensation after the fact. Actual control over whether your work gets used at all. Those aren’t the same thing, and the distinction matters for anyone who’s ever had their writing, music, or images scraped without a word.

Senator David Pocock put it plainly: big tech is “dictating terms to every single Australian” because it can.

The ABC, representing public media, took a different line entirely. Existing copyright laws are adequate, they said. No change needed. That puts them squarely against the tech companies’ reform push, though for different reasons than ARIA or the Writers’ Guild.

Then there’s Trellis Data, an Australian AI company that built competitive models without needing a copyright carve-out. One company. Proof of concept. The argument that “AI development is impossible without unlicensed content” isn’t universal. It’s a preference.

If you’re a small business owner who creates content (blog posts, photos, music for your venue, copy for your website, images for your socials), this fight is about your work. Not in a vague “the internet is complicated” way. Specifically: whether AI companies can ingest everything you’ve ever published online and use it to train models without telling you, paying you, or asking.

The existing debate has largely been framed around the big creative industries: music, film, journalism. But the same principle applies to a tradie’s how-to videos, a chef’s recipe blog, a graphic designer’s portfolio. If the law changes to accommodate mass ingestion without consent, it changes for everyone who makes anything.

There’s an existing SmallBizAI deep dive on how the copyright fight affects AU small businesses here, and the full AI Inquiry recap (covering the big tech testimony) is here.

The opt-in argument deserves one more pass. Google says opt-in is impossible. But opt-in is already the standard in every other commercial relationship. You don’t use a supplier’s services without a contract. You don’t reproduce someone’s brand assets without a licence. The idea that “prior authorisation” is a unique and unreasonable burden on AI companies (each valued at over a trillion dollars) is not an argument. It’s a preference dressed as a constraint.

Annabelle Herd put the licensing question simply: “The law is very certain. It is very simple for these companies to come to us and say, ‘We’d like to license your content.’ They should come to the negotiating table, not to the Prime Minister’s office.”

The inquiry continues. So does the lobbying. Watch where the government lands on opt-in versus opt-out. That one decision will tell you everything about whose interests they’re actually protecting.

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