Music Publishers' Chief Calls AI Copyright Push in Australia a "Vast Landgrab"

John Phelan, director general of the Brussels-based International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), has called a push to change Australian copyright law so AI companies can train their models on creative works "a vast landgrab." He made the remarks in an interview with Billboard, published on 5 November 2026.

Music publishers look after the rights in songs, the written compositions behind each recording, and license them for use. ICMP says it represents 90% of the world's commercially released music. Its members include Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, BMG, Kobalt, Reservoir and Concord Music Publishing.

The campaign at the centre of the dispute involves OpenAI and Anthropic, which have lobbied the Australian federal government for changes to the Copyright Act. Those changes would make it easier to train AI models on copyrighted material. Australian music groups have taken to calling the proposal the "Big AI" plan.

Anthropic has pushed for an opt-out model for the use of Australian content in AI training, according to The Guardian. In its submission to government, the company said it wanted legal certainty under copyright so that AI developers would come to the table. An opt-out model means a creator's work can be used unless the creator takes action to be excluded.

Phelan rejected that approach. He said the mitigation mechanism proposed to Australia's prime minister is an opt-out system, and that an opt-out system cannot work. He also argued that AI companies should follow the same Australian and international laws as companies that already respect the rules and pay for licences.

The government has signalled caution. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in July that tech and AI companies could not use copyright-protected works without consent, credit and compensation. On 13 October, Jo Briskey and Jono Duniam, co-chairs of the joint parliamentary committee on AI, said Australia's existing copyright law was not up to scratch.

Australia's recording industry body has been even more direct. ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd said in October that the proposal would devastate the music industry and make Australia a pariah, meaning an outcast, for rights holders around the world.

A separate review is also looking at the question. The Productivity Commission, the government's independent research body, is running an inquiry called Harnessing Data and Digital Technology. It has specifically asked for feedback on the use of copyrighted material to train AI models. An earlier interim report from the commission put early estimates on AI's effect on multifactor productivity, a measure of how efficiently an economy turns its inputs into output, at between 0.5% and 13% over the next decade.

For the songwriters and performers whose work would be used in that training, the debate comes down to a practical question. Who decides whether their songs are used, and who gets paid when they are?