Labor's AI copyright bargain: scrape now, pay later?
The Albanese government is considering copyright reforms that would give AI companies a legal right to scrape online content, provided they strike enough high-level deals with groups representing traditional copyright holders such as authors and musicians.
That is the core of it. The detail is still fluid. As of 17 September 2026, the proposals had not been finalised and the government was still consulting, after a leaked government document was tabled in the Senate on Tuesday outlining the options under examination, as detailed by the Guardian.
Three models are on the table. One would give AI developers the right to access and train models on any unprotected online material as long as they made deals with enough businesses. In practice, that is a volume test. Do enough commercial deals and the right to mine the open web follows.
A second option works through rights-holder organisations. AI companies would do deals granting broad access to a category of content, such as music or text, across many small creators in that industry. Anyone who has worked on extended collective licensing will recognise the shape. The organisation negotiates. The individual creator is covered by the category deal, whether they sat at the table or not.
A third option would require AI companies to pay a yet-to-be-established central body. That body would then distribute payment to "registered" rights holders. The plumbing does not exist yet. Registration, rates, distribution rules, governance: all to be built.
For individuals, the default flips. Under the proposals, a person who does not want their work scraped would have to digitally protect it, such as with a password or paywall. Put it on the open internet without that protection and it is available for training. Post it on social media and the choice is not even yours. The platform rather than the individual user would control AI scraping access.
Rights-holder groups are unimpressed with the obvious workaround. They say not all scrapers observe the robots.txt protocol. They also say using robots.txt to opt out removes content from search results. You can hide from the crawler, but you hide from Google too. That is not much of an opt-out.
There is an international wrinkle. Overseas creators would have the option to block Australian access to their music and videos if AI companies were granted sweeping access to content in Australia. Geo-blocking as copyright self-defence. Australians who remember publishing fights over territory will hear the echo.
The government line on this has moved. In July, the government insisted it had no plans to grant a text and data mining exemption allowing AI companies to scrape content to train models, as reported by the Guardian. That assurance now sits awkwardly beside the leaked options, which contemplate exactly that kind of broad mining right, albeit dressed up with deal-making and compensation mechanisms.
Other July material helps explain why the assurance is under strain. A proposal put to cabinet would allow AI companies to mine content in exchange for investment and a $350m fund to compensate artists, according to earlier reporting in the Guardian. An industry push sought a copyright carve-out for AI companies in exchange for at least $50bn in datacentre investment. Senator David Pocock's office was tipped off about that industry push in late June. The same month, the government said it will establish a set of Australian Standards for AI that are clear, consistent and mandatory, according to the Prime Minister's office.
Pocock has gone hard. He said Labor easing copyright protections for AI datacentre investment would throw creatives and copyright holders "under the bus", as reported by the Guardian. The language is blunt. The politics are simple. Investment in sheds and servers in exchange for looser rules on Australian stories, songs and journalism.
Flinders University lecturer Lisa Harrison offered the technicians' version. She said tech companies likely already scrape online content to train AI models and the proposed reforms could give them the legal right to do so. In other words, the law would catch up with practice and legitimise it. The government is separately described as considering reforms that would give US big tech unrestricted access to Australian content for AI scraping.
London provides a cautionary tale for ministers. The UK government rejected the types of AI copyright reforms now being considered in Australia after opposition from artists including Elton John and Paul McCartney. When those two agree on anything in public, Whitehall listens. Canberra should take note.
The broader context here is worth spelling out for people who live in the policy weeds. What is being tested is not a narrow exception. It is a shift in who bears the burden. Current copyright law starts with permission. These options start with access, then add bulk deals, a future collecting body, or a technological lock as the backstop. Creators opt out by paywalling their work. Small publishers opt out by disappearing from search. Platforms decide for their users. Overseas owners decide by withdrawing from Australia.
Looking at what this means for the next stage, the consultation matters more than the leak. A central distributor only works if registration is simple, payments are transparent and AI firms cannot game the definition of enough deals. A category deal only works if the rights-holder organisation genuinely represents the long tail it claims to cover. And a protect-it-yourself rule only works if voters accept that posting a photo, a poem or a council submission online means feeding a model unless they lock it away. That is a big ask. Expect the crossbench to press on the July denial, on the size of the investment sweetener, and on whether Australian standards that are clear, consistent and mandatory can coexist with an open scraping right. The government says it is still consulting. It will need to show its working.
